DevOps is changing the way software is built and delivered. It is becoming faster, smarter and more reliable than ever. As organisations continue to focus on becoming more efficient, trends are emerging that will shape the future of DevOps. The future will focus on best practices in security, scalability and sustainability.  

Security, scalability and sustainability are not simply catchwords, but important areas of focus to make sure modern systems are robust, flexible and sustainable where possible.  This blog outlines some possibilities for these new trends and ultimately how they spur innovation and allow organisations to stay competitive. 

The Rise of DevSecOps for Enhanced Security 

Security is now a top priority; DevSecOps implements security safeguards at every phase of the software development lifecycle (SDLC). Traditional security practices are considered to be afterthoughts in the first stage of development.  

In DevSecOps, security is baked in from the beginning so that risks and vulnerabilities are identified and remediated early on. DevSecOps teams develop automated scanning and code analysis tools that are automatically kicked off during the development process.  

Carrying out such automated processes helps to mitigate the fear that security will be a massive breach of the budget later. The shift-left approach to collaboration for developers, operations and security focuses on culture and shared ownership. 

Scalability Through Cloud-Native Technologies 

Scalability is the focal point of contemporary DevOps systems, helping to handle increasing workloads without any issues efficiently. Cloud-native technology, such as Kubernetes and serverless computing, is enabling more scalability and workload management with more flexibility and efficiency.  

Kubernetes is an open-source, scalable container orchestration system. Kubernetes is capable of scaling applications seamlessly in multiple environments with automatic orchestration operations provided to the container.  

Serverless architecture expands on this by completely abstracting infrastructure management functions from developers, to only focus on code. Additionally, serverless architecture takes care of scaling, out of the box, doing all of the hard infrastructure work behind the scenes. 

Sustainability in DevOps Practices 

Sustainability is gaining momentum in the DevOps space as organisations actively seek alternatives to offset their environmental impact while retaining efficiencies. Using the principles of DevOps in optimising resource utilisation can yield lower energy consumption and carbon emissions to better align with worldwide green initiatives.  

Cloud providers are paving the way with sustainability by offering tools, including carbon footprint dashboards, which enable teams to monitor and reduce energy usage in real time. Platforms like these would allow organisations to choose data centres that utilise energy-efficient attributes and optimise workloads with sustainability in mind. 

AI and Machine Learning in DevOps 

Machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) are transforming DevOps & IT operations by automating complex tasks and providing insights that inform decision-making, changing everything within DevOps & IT operations by automating complex tasks and presenting insights that help make decisions. AIOps (AI for IT operations) utilises AI to enhance IT operations, enabling IT teams to perform predictive analytics on potential issues before they impact users of AI to improve IT operations, allowing IT teams to perform predictive analytics for issues before they affect service.  

Since these tools can analyse the vast amount of information available from logs and metrics, they can identify correlations and usage patterns that can quickly help improve resolution times and system reliability.  

Furthermore, machine learning can also be used to improve infrastructure capacity allocation to meet consumer demand in dynamic environments. 

GitOps for Streamlined Deployments 

GitOps is changing DevOps in many ways by relying on Git as the single source of truth for managing infrastructure and application deployments. GitOps employs version control as an advantage by tracking changes to declarative definitions to ensure consistent implementations and allows for simple rollback and fixes if deployment issues occur.  

GitOps stores infrastructure as code definitions in Git repositories, which integrates continuous integration and continuous delivery pipelines, automating deployments of infrastructure and applications and reducing the potential for human errors and speeding up the delivery process. The GitOps method of deploying is particularly effective when implementing complex Kubernetes workloads. 

Platform Engineering for Developer Efficiency 

Platform engineering is starting to take off as a method of streamlining DevOps by developing internal platforms that aim to simplify developers’ workflows. Platform engineering abstracts out a lot of complex processes on the infrastructure side of things to allow developers to spend less time on complicated infrastructure and instead, code.  

It uses self-service tools and development environment standardisation to eliminate as much friction as possible from the developers’ workflows, which allows teams to test and deploy their applications with efficiency, all while staying consistent across development, testing, and production phases. 

FinOps for Cost Optimisation 

With increasing cloud adoption, cost governance is key to DevOps, led by FinOps. FinOps (financial operations) is all about optimising cloud spend by getting teams across the organisation aligned and using cost monitoring tools.  

If cost governance is part of DevOps culture, teams can see how their actions consume resources in real time, avoiding overspend. To put it in another way, using this approach ensures scalability and performance, without compromising your financial budgets. 

Low-Code and No-Code Platforms 

Low-code and no-code platforms are transforming DevOps by allowing applications to be developed faster and with minimal coding experience. They use drag-and-drop capabilities and templates to allow developers and business users to facilitate app-building quickly.  

Low-code platforms are built in DevOps pipelines for testing and deploying to shorten the process time and delivery. This will enable agile teams to respond to market demands while allowing quality and scale. 

Data Observability for Proactive Solutions 

Data observability represents a shift in DevOps, allowing teams to see and understand system performance in real-time. Data observability goes beyond traditional monitoring to give deep insight into application behaviour (often described as understandability); data observability derives context from logs, metrics and traces.  

Observability allows teams to discover performance bottlenecks and more effectively troubleshoot problems before they affect end users.  

As by-products of observability, DevOps teams can collect and analyse data without the confines of vendor-specific tools using OpenTelemetry and build more durable services where incidents can’t happen, or at least can’t make it past the first line of defence. 

Conclusion 

As DevOps continues to grow, rapid changes such as security, scalability and sustainability are at the forefront of these changes. DevOps implementation services, DevSecOps consulting, cloud-native technologies and sustainability have impacted the way teams build and deliver software.  

Increasing the potential for AI, GitOps, and platform engineering means that organisations can move faster and more efficiently.  

Multi-cloud and observability help ensure flexibility and performance. As DevOps will continue to evolve, keeping ahead of the trend is vital. What trends will you take advantage of to build your DevOps future?