ChannelVision Magazine

Buyers Side Within traditional corporate IT orga- nizations, however, DevOps has limited adoption relative to other practices, according to an IT management best practices survey recently compiled by research firm Computer Economics. “Nevertheless, this is beginning to change, as IT organizations realize the benefits of continuous development and continuous delivery for customer- facing and strategic in-house devel- oped system,” said CE researchers. For the less initiated, DevOps is a mashup of the words development and operations, denoting an organizational model with a set of processes and tools that promote collaboration between software developers and IT operations and applications, allowing frequent de- ployment of system changes, explained Computer Economic. Traditional software change man- agement processes treat development, testing and deployment as discrete steps carried out by different IT orga- nizational units, explained Computer Economics. Software developers build a new release of the system, another group is responsible for testing and the operations group is responsible for applying the new release to the produc- tion environment. There are typically checklists and approvals at each step, and the whole process can take months or even years. Under DevOps, developers are empowered to build, test and commit small changes directly into the production environment. New releases are rolled out in- crementally as a series of small- er changes that can be imple- mented much more quickly than under the traditional model. In software development firms, SaaS providers in particu- lar, DevOps is a well-established model for software change management. But a sizeable 46 percent of survey respondents – which were primarily traditional corporate IT organizations – do not prac- tice DevOps at any level. “For many tech providers, DevOps is engrained in the culture,” said Tom Dun- lap, director of research for Computer Economics, an IT analyst firm based in Irvine, Calif. “But too many traditional IT organizations, if they’ve heard of DevOps at all, just assume it’s not for them. This is a mistake. IT leaders need to think about how they can apply DevOps for in- house written systems where the pace of change is high – or, if the rate of change could be increased, it would represent a competitive advantage.” DevOps is a natural extension of ag- ile development, said CE. “Just as agile development builds software in small, iterative build cycles, so DevOps ap- plies enhancements as small incremental changes that are committed daily, hourly or even moment-by-moment into the pro- duction system,” said the research firm. According to Tracy Corbo, analysts with 451 Research, DevOps is critical to IT departments as they embrace digital transformation. “Organizations that have integrated their IT and applications teams and em- braced dev/ops are well ahead of the curve,” argued Corbo. “Because applica- tions are the fuel that powers the digital transformation engine. Companies that lack the benefit of a collaborative app/ dev team will lag in the transition.” Still, only 20 percent of the IT depart- ments surveyed by 451 report that their IT organizations have integrated their developer and application teams. “It is still early days in the shift away from siloed IT teams,” said Corbo. o The Dawn of DevOps in Corporate IT F or provider of cloud services, DevOps is practically a given. Developers at Google, Amazon, Netflix, and others can spend significant resources on this IT practice of linking software development with software operation. By Martin Vilaboy Practice Adoption Stages: DevOps Source: Computer Economics Source: McKinsey & Co. Q. Which of the following best describes your organization’ adoption of I ternet of Things (loT)? Enterprise loT Adoption Source: 451 Research 220 200 180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 Labor costs Robot prices Considering, but no current plan to implement Practicing Formally and Consistently Practicing Formally but Inconsistently Practicing Informally Percent of Organizations Implementing No Activity Plan to implement in next 24 months Plan to implement in next 12 months In discovery/proof of co cept In use (not including pilot projects) 46% 25% 15% 5% 9% 46% 0% 20% 40% 60% 14% 24% 11% 5% Channel Vision | July - August, 2018 40