What if we told you that DevOps services could supercharge your development process, delivering faster results with fewer headaches? You might be skeptical, but it’s the truth that might become a reality if you do everything right.
In this article, we will delve into the transformative power of DevOps services, illustrating how it can revolutionize your development process, offering swifter outcomes and reducing the problems that traditionally accompany software development projects.
What is DevOps?
DevOps is a set of practices and a cultural philosophy that emphasizes the collaboration and communication of software developers and IT operations professionals. The goal of DevOps is to shorten the systems development life cycle and improve the quality of software by breaking down the barriers between Development and Operation teams. DevOps teams use a variety of practices to achieve their goals, such as:
- Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD): to automate the process of building, testing, and deploying software.
- Infrastructure as code: to treat infrastructure as software, which allows it to be managed and updated in the same way as code
- Monitoring and alerting: to quickly identify and fix problems
- Automation: to free up time for teams to focus on more strategic work
DevOps can be a complex and challenging practice and way of engineering, but it can also be very rewarding if done smartly and attentively.
How to explain DevOps in simple words?
Let’s take an example from life. DevOps profession is similar to the one of a wedding planner. Both roles require meticulous planning and seamless coordination to ensure successful outcomes. As DevOps ensures smooth collaboration across departments, wedding planners should connect well with the desires, schedules and budgets of a couple and vendors. Finally, both professions prioritize continuous improvement and efficiency, striving to minimize disruptions and to ensure flawless end results.
The relevancy of DevOps is supported by its widespread popularity among industry leaders. Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Etsy and many other companies are continuously using DevOps in their SDLC. Besides, according to statistics by Gartner, a leading research and advisory company, DevOps will be used by 60% of global 1000 organizations by the end of 2024.
When businesses need DevOps services
Reason 1: When they want to be efficient
Is it possible to fill a leaky bucket with water? The same applies to inefficient businesses. No matter how much money you invest, they keep disappearing. Hiring a DevOps is like hiring a plumber to fix those profit leaks. This expert would optimize processes and procedures within your company, ensuring that you have a smart approach in your SDLC.
Efficiency is not solely about optimization, but also about adaptability. Darwin once stated, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” Thanks to automation, collaboration and continuous delivery, organizations can swiftly adapt their software development processes to evolving market conditions. Just as the most adaptable species thrive in nature’s ever-changing environment, the most adaptable companies become the leaders in the market.
Reason 2: When they want to save money and minimize waste
DevOps slashes costs thanks to automation of the redundant tasks. An Automation Tester’s code can often replace numerous Manual Testers, freeing up valuable human resources for more important and strategic activities and increasing your company’s overall efficiency for maximum impact.
Thanks to optimized infrastructure and scalability, DevOps helps to ensure that the resources are only consumed when they are needed. It helps you to identify areas, where you are wasting money, encouraging data-driven decision-making and smart forecasting.
Reason 3: When they wish to establish teamwork and collaboration across departments
DevOps promotes collaboration by creating an environment, where different experts and teams work together seamlessly, sharing information, automating routine tasks, having common goals, and collectively attempting to reach continuous improvement.
Think of your company as the military force of a country. Would it be efficient and successful if its army, fleet, air and space forces didn’t cooperate? The same happens if the Development, Operations, Marketing and Sales departments don’t collaborate to reach a common goal.
Reason 4: When they wish to have more reliable and faster software releases
There is a saying that the contemporary customer has the patience of a toddler in a candy store. Taking this into consideration, it is crucial to implement DevOps to reach as fast and as reliable software releases as it is possible.
The implementation of best practices (infrastructure as code, security and compliance measures, CI/CD processes, etc.) allows quick early issue detection and resolution. In its turn, it leads to faster and more reliable software releases.
For example, by using IaC, teams can automate infrastructure provisioning, ensuring consistent and reproducible environments. This not only reduces manual errors but also accelerates the setup of development, testing, and production environments, leading to faster release process.
Reason 5: When they want to unlock the software development innovations
Thanks to DevOps mindset of continuous improvement and learning from failures, teams are eager to take risks, to experiment with emerging technologies and find the creative solutions to problems. Such an approach encourages and cultivates an environment, where the developers are not limited by the set of inflexible instructions but are ready to rework the existing process or creating better alternatives to the outdates solutions.
For example, a DevOps team working on a mobile app might use feature flags to release a new, experimental feature to a small part of users. They can collect real-time feedback and usage data to refine and enhance the feature based on user preferences. Such an iterative process of experimentation and improvement allows for innovative features to evolve quickly, meeting user needs and driving app innovation.
Wrapping Up
In 2024, businesses that want to stay ahead of the competition will need to adopt DevOps practices to deliver software faster, reduce costs and be efficient. Of course, incorporation of this practice will not be easy and quick. It will be associated with numerous problems along the way, such as resistance to change, lack of employee expertise, as well as other barriers. However, once you manage to overcome these challenges, DevOps will redefine the operation of your business, putting it to a new level of quality.
Contact a reliable DevOps service provider today to learn more how they can help you.
Remember, DevOps can become your ticket to efficiency, saved financial resources and consequently business success. It would be sad and costly not to use it.