Why DevOps is critical to your organization’s success

Source – jaxenter.com

Now standard within tech space, here’s what you need to know about DevOps for the coming year. 2017 started off with a DevOps bang. VCs have poured an enormous amount of capital into DevOps technology companies. Other companies have approved the large-scale adoption of DevOps tools in this year’s IT budgets with the recognition that this technology is now a “must-have”.

A survey speculated that that “in 2016, 38% were already using DevOps, whereas in 2017 it is assumed to rise additionally by 35%”. This brings up to an overall 70% of the IT market focusing on DevOps technology and its capabilities.

With the landscape of today’s business challenges constantly shifting, traditional delivery approaches are being pushed to new levels. Accelerating application delivery, tuning systems for improvement and helping business attain higher levels of availability and agility are all accessible through DevOps.

There’s no doubt that DevOps is becoming mainstream. This year is going to be the year of DevOps, since many software organizations are moving towards adopting DevOps. But how do you make sure you have a successful DevOps adoption? Looking for a guide or how other companies have done it can help! But, in the end, everyone must find their own path.

And yet, as with all revolutions, some adjustments in the field must take place. So as DevOps “takes over” businesses this year more than ever, here are certain critical things that had to be taken into account for the successful run of an organization in 2017.

How to start

DevOps is a mindset, rather than a set of tools or techniques. It is aimed at developing a collaborative relationship grounded on a common set of objectives and to deliver IT services that will ultimately provide real value. It’s not just a collaboration between developers and operations, but everyone, from managers, product owners, infosec practioners, and designers. Everyone shares responsibility for delivering those changes as quickly as required, and for keeping the platform as available, secure and performant as the business needs.

Increasingly, all businesses are becoming technology businesses whether they realize it or not. Which means that any company involved in delivering technology will benefit from adopting a DevOps approach.

Survival of the fittest

Slow IT inevitably impacts your organization’s success, potentially threatening its mid–to-long-term survival. In time, a failure to invest in and future-proof your IT will limit your capabilities in terms of innovation, new product, and service development. IT needs to put customers first. Poor customer experience can damage your brand, customer and partner relationships in a way that a DevOps strategy can protect against.

High time for cloud

As cloud environments become the future of IT, so does the need for more DevOps approaches. Often, the risk-averse organizations that have resisted DevOps approaches have are the same companies that have been resistant to moving to the cloud. Now, those companies are finding themselves lagging years behind their competitors and facing major challenges to catch up.

Without embracing DevOps, companies struggle to realize the full benefits of moving to the cloud. Commoditization and increased reliability of server hardware mean that the benefits of an IT-led “lift and shift” to the cloud are marginalized. Cloud migration strategy without a collaborative DevOps approach will probably fail to deliver the expected benefits. It is no surprise, after all, that there’s a direct correlation between the growing confidence in and uptake of public cloud technologies and the rise of DevOps.

A collaborative culture

By definition, DevOps is designed to break down the barriers that exist among the development and operations teams, whether regarding project management or application performance. DevOps enables teams to work collaboratively to build and deliver safe and reliable systems. By reaching higher levels of availability – a key outcome of the DevOps approach – organisation will operate more effectively.

Conclusion

The speed related with DevOps brings far greater business agility, enabling businesses to respond to customer behaviors, market shifts, and new technologies quicker. Iterating faster essentially keeps any sort of business ahead in the game, outpacing the competition.