Is DevOps Right for Your Company?
The tech industry loves buzzwords. It seems that a new buzzword appears every day, created by blending two technologies to solve a problem that may or may not exist. But some of these words perfectly capture the essence of the modern tech landscape.
One such buzzword is DevOps, which has taken the IT world by storm. It has become so popular that most companies (at least those with IT departments) have either already adopted it or are considering adopting it in the near future.
But is DevOps right for your company? That, after all, is the most important question to ask before considering its implementation.
What is DevOps?
Simply put, DevOps brings together development and operations to shorten the software/system development lifecycle and ensure continuous delivery of software.
This definition leads to another question.
What is continuous delivery?
Continuous delivery is a software development approach where software releases are done in short cycles, which allows for reliable software releases at any time. This approach to the software development lifecycle heavily relies on automation since the goal is to have instant and reliable releases. Without built-in automation, continuous delivery would be impossible.
Thus, from the very beginning, we see that DevOps is focused on a very fast and reliable software release cycle that requires automation to succeed.
Now the picture should be much clearer.
But let's dig deeper.
The Cost of DevOps
When considering whether DevOps is right for your company, you need to keep costs in mind. Yes, when implemented into a company's culture and systems, a DevOps approach can ultimately save money (since software deployment becomes nearly automatic and significantly more reliable). But the money you will have to spend upfront can be substantial.
Why?
Training.
Continuous delivery of software is difficult to set up, configure correctly, and maintain. This means you will need to hire IT personnel capable of implementing this new strategy. You will need developers and operations administrators who are proficient in continuous delivery tools such as Maven, Jenkins, Puppet, Nexus, Fabric, JIRA, Jmeter, and git. And since there is no single tool that enables CD, you will have to piece together several software and system components to perfectly fit your needs.
Thus, you not only need personnel capable of implementing such a system, but also need to have specialists on staff who can plan and design it. The costs for this can be significant. The only upside is that most of the software is open source, so the budget won't suffer in that regard.
It all comes down to needing a staff capable of piecing together this very complex system.
DevOps Culture
Next, we must consider the DevOps culture itself. The idea behind this approach is that for it to succeed, development and operations teams need to collaborate effectively. To do this, you need to assess these two teams and honestly answer the question: "Can they successfully function together?"
This may seem like a silly question. After all, these people work in your company, so shouldn't they, in theory, work together? While at first glance it may seem yes, you need to dig deeper. Egos can get in the way of a successful DevOps implementation.
Before deciding to adopt DevOps, you can first test these departments for their ability to work together. Ask them to develop and build a new application or system. If they can work cohesively, then you are already ahead in the DevOps game. If the test project fails, you will either have to restructure your teams or forget about DevOps altogether.
How Do You Use Software?
Ask yourself this question: How do you use software? If your business relies on software for innovation and to stay competitive and agile, then DevOps is probably just what you are looking for. If you rely on software to run your operations and want it to be continuously updated and reliable, then again, DevOps may be the best approach.
However, if software is a product you sell and your business is suited to a traditional development lifecycle, DevOps may not be necessary. If you only use third-party software for your work, then DevOps most likely will not bring you much benefit.
Conclusion
Ultimately, DevOps helps software-dependent businesses achieve speed, efficiency, reliability, security, and agility. DevOps enables increased productivity, creates space for innovation, improves customer satisfaction, enhances the quality of the software used, and raises the level of IT security. If you want your company to achieve these goals and your operations already depend on software, then if you have not added DevOps to the process, you are not getting the most out of the software development lifecycle.