New survey results released last week shows just how thoroughly DevOps has captured the mindshare of enterprises. Commissioned by Rackspace, the global Vanson Bourne survey showed that more than three-quarters of IT decision-makers are now familiar with the term DevOps and well over half of them have already implemented DevOps practices to some degree or another. And by 2017, that figure could go up by another 31 percent according to survey respondents’ plans.
“This survey shows a real appetite for the kind of development and operational processes today’s digitally-focused businesses need,” said Chris Jackson, CTO of DevOps Services at Rackspace.
Among those who have chosen the DevOps route, nearly half have already fully integrated their development team with their operations team and 38 percent say that integration is in effect for all of their applications. For the most part, the ops team has been the primary champions for these projects. Approximately 43 percent of respondents with DevOps programs in place report that IT operations have driven them and 32 percent say either the CIO or the CTO have driven the program. Just 16 percent say developers have been behind their DevOps transformation.
As expected, among respondents who have deployed DevOps, 57 percent have already experienced faster delivery of new features and 46 percent have a more stable operating environment. Additionally, 43 percent reported increased innovation and 32 percent have even reduced their IT costs.
However, it is the business upsides of respondents’ DevOps adoption that are really eye-opening. The speed and innovation seems to have directly translated to improvements in the business as a whole. Over half of companies that have implemented DevOps report an increase in customer conversion and satisfaction and 43 percent say they’ve seen an improvement in customer engagement. As a result, DevOps is stimulating topline revenue growth, with 38 percent of respondents reporting an increase in sales as a result of their revised IT approach.
“DevOps is empowering IT functions to make a real impact on the business,” Jackson said. “It is also finally an opportunity for IT to be recognized for having a central part to play in delivering great customer experiences and ultimately increasing sales.”
However, deploying DevOps has not always been easy for these organizations. Approximately 37 percent of respondents who’d embraced DevOps reported internal resistance from ops teams and 32 percent said developer resistance posed problems. Fortunately, less than a quarter of wider business stakeholders stood in the way of DevOps adoption. Nevertheless, among all IT decision-makers, 41 percent still said they had other more urgent IT priorities that kept them from the DevOps journey.
“DevOps is all about encouraging innovation and streamlining processes to help ensure development and operations are working hand in hand to deliver business objectives,” Jackson said. “While, the findings suggest that the DevOps journey is already becoming well established in many organizations, there is still a job to do in articulating the benefits to all groups involved for them to accept and drive through this change.”
