- What is DevOps?
- Why is DevOps needed?
- DevOps vs Traditional IT
- Advantages of DevOps
- Use Cases of DevOps
Introduction to DevOps
A combination of cultural philosophies, tools, and practices that are used to increase an organization’s ability to deliver applications at a high velocity is known as DevOps. It helps in evolving and improving products at a faster pace when compared to the traditional software infrastructure process. This allows an organization to provide better services to its customers, in a more efficient manner.
The three main principles of DevOps are communication, collaboration, and integration. The term was coined by Patrick Debois in 2009 and is an extension of the agile development environment. It is a combination of ‘development’ and ‘operations’ and helps in increasing an organization’s ability to align the development and IT operations in terms of better communication and collaboration.
Why is DevOps needed?
One of the main reasons to integrate DevOps is because, without this, the development and operations team work in complete isolation. Testing and Deployment were considered to be isolated activities that are done after the design-build. Without DevOps, teams would be spending time in activities such as testing, deploying, designing, while their focus should be on building the project.
Making use of a manual code in deployment can also lead to human error in production, causing a delay in outcomes. Another point to consider is that only 17% of teams can use delivery software fast enough. This proves our pain point.
DevOps vs Traditional IT
Let’s take a look at the difference between traditional IT and DevOps.
| Traditional IT | DevOps |
| Development team works on testing. Operations team works on paperwork required. | Both teams work together, thus, resulting in better visibility of infrastructure requirements. |
| Projections regarding redundancy, data center locations and storage requirements are skewed. This is because of no inputs from the developers. | Projections regarding redundancy, data center locations and storage requirements are accurate as there is information from the developers. |
| Both the teams continue monitoring their plans separately and have little knowledge regarding each other’s progress. | Both teams work jointly and develop a plan that works towards business and IT needs. APM (Application Performance Monitoring) tools can also be used. |
| Chances of load testing crashes are high, due to which there can be a delay in release. | Development team is able to fix crashes on time, causing no delays. |
Advantages of DevOps
Speed
DevOps moves at a higher velocity. Thus, organizations can innovate for customers faster, they can adapt to the changing market requirements, they can grow efficiently. A DevOps model ensures that your development and operations team can achieve the desired results at a faster speed. An example of this would be how microservices and continuous delivery allow their teams to take ownership of services. Thus releasing updates to them quicker than others.
Rapid Delivery
It helps in increasing the frequency and pace of your organization’s releases. This allows you to innovate and improve your product at a much faster rate. Being able to fix bugs faster, and release new features faster means that you can respond to customers needs. This can help you in building a competitive advantage.
Reliability
DevOps is more reliable. It ensures the quality of application updates, thus enabling delivery at a rapid pace while still maintaining a positive experience for the customers/end-users. The monitoring and logging practices available in DevOps allow you to be informed about the real-time performance.
Also Read: How to Build a DevOps Engineer Resume
Scale
It helps you to manage the infrastructure processes on a large scale. Automation can consistently help in managing complex or changing systems efficiently and also with reduced risk. DevOps practices such as infrastructure as code allow you to manage testing, production environments in an efficient and repeatable manner.
Improved Collaboration
One of the biggest advantages of DevOps is that it helps you build an efficient team. You can build this under a cultural model that emphasizes values such as accountability and ownership. The operations and developers teams collaborate in close context and share numerous responsibilities. They also combine their workflows and can reduce any inefficiency. There is a reduced handover period between the two teams.
Security
There is a greater amount of security. Your team can adopt a DevOps model with no sacrifices made towards security. Automated compliance policies, fine-grained controls, and configuration management techniques are utilized. It also offers a lower failure rate and offers a reduction in defects across the entire lifecycle.
Cost Efficiency
The software development process is made easier due to its cost-efficiency. It is more stable, secure, and changes are auditable. This is a huge plus point for any IT management team or organization.
Use Cases of DevOps
1. Application of DevOps in Online Financial Trading Company
Testing, building, and development of methodology was automated in the financial trading company. With the help of DevOps, deployment was done within 45 seconds. Earlier, the same deployments would take up to days or weeks to be completed. Thus, the overall time of the process has reduced, making the process smoother and increasing the interest of clients.
2. Application in Car manufacturing Industry
With the help of DevOps, employees can help car manufacturers catch any error in scaling the production. Earlier, this was not possible.
3. Benefits to Airlines Industry
The united airlines have saved close to $500,000 with its change to a continuous testing standard. With the help of DevOps, it has also been able to increase its coverage of code by 85% compared to before.
4. Bug Reduction of DevOps
With the introduction of DevOps, bugs have reduced by close to 35%. Using this, Rabobank was able to provide a better quality of applications to their customers and clients within a shorter period as it massively reduces the time taken during regression testing.
Also Read: Career Opportunities for DevOps Engineers in India
5. Faster development of software
DevOps helps in faster delivery of applications. This is due to speedy delivery. The faster development of software helps in the overall development and functioning of your organization.
Thus, we can conclude by saying that DevOps has become a very important and valuable tool for any organization. It is an asset due to its wide range of applications and benefits. If you found this blog helpful and wish to learn more such concepts, enrol with Great Learning Academy’s free online courses and upskill today!
