Successfully Integrating DevOps while Deploying Cloud Applications

Source – devops.com

Transforming to a high-performance DevOps environment can provide competitive advantages, but it requires change—and that doesn’t come easily to most organizations. DevOps requires cultural changes that are inherent to automating previously manual tasks: They are perhaps intimidating to those involved and they require flexibility and enterprisewide buy-in to get right. Furthering these people-side transformational complications are cloud application deployments, creating a need for enterprises to deliver innovative technologies and services with greater speed and quality—without hits to reliability and security.

DevOps Blended with AWS Proficiency

One approach to this problem is blending DevOps knowledge and Amazon Web Services (AWS) proficiency to guide development teams to better align the people, processes and technology needed to facilitate successful cloud initiatives.

In transitioning to a more modern, DevOps-driven approach, companies often encounter a number of challenges, on both a technological and cultural level. The most successfully integrated DevOps occurs as a function of value analysis and process overview, addressing the individual needs of an enterprise rather than fitting them into a preset mold.

Implemented correctly, DevOps blended with AWS proficiency allows organizations to maintain quality and configuration of their infrastructure environments, allowing application development teams to retain control over their processes and toolsets. AWS also allows the enterprise to maintain security: Rather than protocols that are standalone, they’re built into IT processes from the beginning, allowing customization with ease.

AWS understands what is important to its partners when building tools, successfully addressing needs while staying ahead of the demand and, in turn, saving time. They accelerate the ability to deliver and allow an enterprise to focus on what’s most important during their journey to the cloud: value analysis.

Fundamentally Designed to Refine Business Processes

It is very important to approach projects first from a top-level view: Where does this piece of work fit into my broader organization?

DevOps at its core is fundamentally about incorporating different disciplines of a business to create better practices than what are already in place. When an enterprise chooses to implement automation, it typically gains a better view of its business as a whole, incrementally increasing awareness at a birds-eye level. When complex business functions and operations are laid out in more mathematical terms and formulas, it suddenly becomes clear where applying automation can reduce waste.

Getting these changes implemented quickly and with as little effort as possible naturally leads to successful automation. Enterprises remove such tasks that traditionally required an excess in resources by asking, “What value doe this process add? Is there a more efficient alternative?” With automation, these useless business practices are eliminated, freeing resources for more important initiatives.

Increase Employee Awareness, Increase Productivity   

One of the most important parts of the entire DevOps integration process is ensuring that everyone understands each other and their role. Properly embraced, a DevOps culture will be characterized by increased collaboration, shared responsibility and autonomous teams—leading to improved quality, valued feedback and the end goal of increased automation.

People are naturally resistant to change. Members need to be aware of the business and how they—and will continue to—fit in.

Ultimately, DevOps is not something that can simply be bought. Success during implementation requires the application of technologies, tools and products that are actually a fit between new processes and existing systems.