New to some, old hat to many and a source of ambiguity to more than a few, DevOps is being embraced by the IT world as an answer to increase quality of business processes—to innovate faster and to get new products to market sooner in a defined time frame. There is no doubt DevOps has fundamentally changed the way an IT organization works and how it gets things done.
But one may argue what, exactly, does it mean? Is it a process? A methodology? A paradigm? A platform? A technology or a culture? DevOps is not a platform or technology, but a practice that requires internal cultural changes where working together is encouraged to reduce complexity and remove the siloed setup while ensuring the stability of service delivery.
In simpler terms, DevOps is an evolution of agile software development that aims to break down the “wall of confusion” between developers (Dev) and operations (Ops) team to collaborate better so they can deliver frequent changes faster, with higher efficiency and robust quality based on market demands.
Let’s have a look what Gartner has to say:
“DevOps represents a change in IT culture, focusing on rapid IT service delivery through the adoption of agile, lean practices in the context of a system-oriented approach. DevOps emphasizes people (and culture), and seeks to improve collaboration between operations and development teams. DevOps implementations utilize technology — especially automation tools that can leverage an increasingly programmable and dynamic infrastructure from a life cycle perspective.”
Once you have a firm grasp of what it is, we can move forward. The critical step is to assess your business environment and processes for DevOps compatibility. The assessment questions could be:
- Are you meeting your project timelines?
- Are your build, deploy and test processes automated?
- Is your development and delivery cost rapidly increasing?
- Do you need more stable operating environments?
- Do you want to improve customer satisfaction through frequent and timely updates, immediate feedback loops and continuous improvement?
- Are you ready to break down the traditional silos across teams and ready to go faster?
If you’ve answered “yes” to any of these questions, then you may want to consider DevOps as a service for your enterprise. But before you consider it, the critical first step is to research your consulting partner. Look for a partner that has a long-term vision and a clear, tightly integrated road map to help your business realize the true benefits of DevOps. So whatever your drivers are for undertaking the initiative, your partner should have the requisite skills and experience to guide you on your journey. Alongside, your partner should offer you a complete range of services. From initial discussions through to delivery and ongoing support.
There’s a lot to be said for DevOps. In a business climate that’s all about speed, quality and delivery, it’s critical that enterprises understand the power of DevOps. It is not a fringe movement; it has now become a key part of enterprise IT planning to stay relevant in the marketplace.
About the Author / Ritesh Gujrati
Ritesh Gujrati is digital marketer at OSSCube, a global solution provider. He frequently talks about disruptive technologies like DevOps, digital transformation, big data, IT modernization, IoT and cloud. He is well-versed with web analytics tools, paid media marketing and has hands-on experience on organic promotion and content marketing. Feel free to contact Ritesh through [email protected].