The term comes from the combination of Development and Operations. The DevOps philosophy represents a set of ideas and procedures based on security, collaboration, data analysis and other aspects that you will find described in this article.
What is the DevOps approach?
The DevOps methodology is nothing more than the approach to adopt in order to accelerate the processes that allow an idea (such as a new software feature, an enhancement request or a bug fix) to move from development to deployment in a production environment where it can deliver value to the user.
In the past there were several teams, each of which was assigned a small responsibility; any errors and/or inconsistencies found were collected and then sent to the manager, who passed them back to the development team. Today the process has become faster, and inconsistencies and errors are dealt with immediately.
According to the DevOps model, the teams dedicated to development and production no longer act separately. In some cases, on the contrary, the two teams of Operators and Developers are merged into a single unit in which engineers are active throughout the entire application lifecycle, from development and testing to deployment and production, and acquire a range of skills not limited to a single function.
Why is the DevOps approach important?
Software and the Internet are factors that have changed the world and its economy, starting with shopping, entertainment and banking. Software is no longer just a support for business but has become an integral component of any organisation. Companies interact with their customers through software products in the form of applications or online services that can be used on many different devices. Companies often employ other software products to improve operational efficiency by transforming every link in the value chain, for example logistics, communications and operations. Today’s companies, therefore, must transform the way they create and deliver their software, in the same way that industries producing physical goods transformed, over the course of the 20th century, the way they designed, built and distributed their products through industrial automation.
The DevOps corporate culture
The transition to the DevOps approach requires an evolution in corporate mindset and culture. In a nutshell, a DevOps model aims to remove the barriers between two teams that do not usually communicate with each other: developers and the operations team.
In some organisations the two groups may even be merged into a single unit, in which engineers can take care of everything. In the DevOps approach, the two teams work closely together to optimise both developer productivity and operational reliability.
They tend to communicate more frequently to achieve greater efficiency and improve the quality of the services they provide to customers. They always retain control over their own services, often beyond the traditional definition of their role, because they are focused on the needs of the end customer and want to help meet those needs.
Quality control and security teams are also often more directly involved in the tasks of these teams. Companies that adopt a DevOps model, regardless of their organisational structure, have teams whose responsibilities include control of the entire development and infrastructure lifecycle.
This methodology is an approach to culture, processes and tools that aims to deliver greater business value and responsiveness through the provision of automated, fast, iterative, self-service and high-quality IT services. Such approaches require frequent communication between the operations and development teams.
In addition, work within each team must be centred on a relationship of empathy between colleagues. Scalability and flexible provisioning are also needed. Developers, who usually write code in a standard development environment, work closely with IT operations staff to speed up the build, test and release phases of software without sacrificing reliability.
Naturally, all this requires more frequent changes to code and a more dynamic use of infrastructure. However, these needs cannot be met by traditional management strategies and, in order to gain a real advantage, some changes need to be introduced.
The DevOps methodology applies open source principles and practices such as:
- A culture of collaboration that values openness and transparency.
- Automation of the process from development to ongoing operations.
- Adoption of technologies coming from innovative development communities.
Market Share
The global market is on an upward trend, growing at a considerable pace between 2021 and 2025.
In 2021, the market was growing at a steady pace but, with the increasing adoption of strategies by key players, the market is expected to go well beyond the projected horizon.
The global Development Operations (DevOps) market report 2021 offers a broad overview of the sector over the forecast period. The research covers a wide range of topics, as well as an in-depth examination of key market developments and factors. These factors, also known as market dynamics, include main drivers, restraints, opportunities and threats, which are used to summarise the impact of these factors on the market.
The growth of the DevOps culture
The DevOps methodology, therefore, in a nutshell, is the integration of Development (Dev) and Operations (Ops), which together create a cooperative process.
According to IDC, the DevOps market will reach $8 billion by 2022, and another report by Grand View Research speaks of around $13 billion by 2025. All this is clearly generating strong interest from companies.
Another driver contributing to this change is the growth of the cloud. According to Oracle’s forecasts, by 2025, 80% of IT solutions will move to the cloud.
The methodology requires new technologies to be tried out. Recent research by the DevOps Institute has shown that 55% of respondents prefer to have the DevOps team within their own organisation. Unfortunately, many companies lack the necessary skills in-house and have budget constraints that make it impossible to hire new staff. One possibility is to create in-house universities.
This is what, for example, the famous shipping company FedEx did. The company’s CIO, knowing that there were not enough in-house skills within the engineering team, decided to create the “FedEx Cloud Dojo”, which teaches its own engineers modern software development and technologies and functions as a university for FedEx. The university has trained more than 2,500 software programmers.
With growth in the market of around 40 to 45% over the last five years, demand for DevOps is expected to increase further.
