DevOps in India

DevOps is primarily seen as a very effective enabler to achieve culture transformation in addition to process and technology. So we have a concept of people architecture in DevOps which basically describes the way people should collaborate and communicate in the world of DevOps.

DevOps was born out of a thought stream to enable a better IT.During that process, the people dimension came out strongly. The three culture dimensions have become very important in DevOps.

These dimensions are

• Propensity
• Belief system

In an Indian context there is a huge diversity of these two people dimension.The propensity of Indian IT is majorly service and strong mathematical and linguistic capability. Almost every Indian knows a minimum of 3 language. English, Hindi and mother tongue. The belief system of Indians is 'Athithi Devo Bhava'.

So with this kind of a Propensity and Belief System does DevOps needs to be redefined in India? Does the DevOps in India needs to be differently construed.

Mythical Agile

If you look at the mythology of India - specially the Ramayana and Mahabharata from an agile angle - we find few very important principles.

1. Individual Capability precedes everything : This we can find in the story of Ramayana. With individual capability of lord Rama, a complete war was eventually won by two human beings. All the rest were animals or people with low intelligence.
2. Small team is more effective than large teams : This is the story of Mahabharata.The story of the Pandavas.
3. A team of 5 people is ideal for agile with a scrum master : Again story of Mahabharata - 5 people Ninja team being the Pandavas, and the scrum master being lord Krishna.
4. Its not a game - its a war : The story of Ramayana and Mahabharata are both war stories.The Indian mythology has a concept of relating to life as a war. There are three major mythical weapons that is of relevance to DevOps. This we will discuss in the next section.
5. The Phoenix [read Gita] principle : In both the stories - the main characters are sent to exile due to circumstances - all due to throne which is equivalent to economic or business success.Both the stories sends the main characters to exile for multiple years - where they learn to live life in a very hard way - face bad people - but still survive. At times they are not even allowed to use any weapons. However there is concept of being born from ones own ash extending to the eternal cycle of life , death and eventually achieving Moksha or liberation due to Karma [read Technical Debt]. This is the main people principle.

Process and Tools

Indians are diverse. The processes they follow are diverse. However there is an infinite unity in diversity.If we apply Conway's law on this - the technology practices and tools are also diverse. Hence in an Indian ecosystem - implementing DevOps is actually implementing a smart way to integrate diversity.

The Three Mythical Weapons

The three mythical weapons that can be mentioned in this context are :

1. Pashupatstra : Pashupatastra was given to Arjun by Lord Shiva after extreme penance and a test which required him to duel with Lord Shiva himself. Pashupatastra was not just a weapon it was more of a knowledge which included a weapon along with. This can be seen as DevOps competency development capability.
2. Narayanastra : The Narayanastra was the personal weapon of Lord Vishnu in his Narayana form. This astra or weapon in turn fires a powerful tirade of millions of deadly missiles [read build and deployment jobs] simultaneously. The intensity of the shower[jobs] rises with increase in resistance. The only way to defend against the missile is to show total submission before the missiles hit, this in turn will cause this weapon to stop and spare the target [higher agility via waste reduction]. It is one of the six 'Mantramukta' [read - universal deployment] weapons that cannot be resisted.This can be seen as very compelling , analyst backed DevOps toolchain that is containerized , immutable and scalable.
3. Brahmastra : This weapon that was said to be able to destroy capable of destroying creation and vanquishing everything. It is one of the most destructive, powerful and irresistible weapons mentioned in Mythology. It is termed as a fiery weapon that creates a fierce fireball, blazing up with terrible flames and countless horrendous thunder flashes. When discharged, all nature including trees, oceans, and animals tremble, and the sky surrounds with flame, glaciers melt and mountains shatter with copious noise all around. When struck, it causes complete destruction to each and every resource of that area, further not a single blade of grass will ever grow in that area. No rainfall for 12 divine years (4320 years) and climate condition will worsen. This is very similar to the atom or nuclear bomb of modern days. This can be seen as the DevOps toolset in action - in terms of waste removal.

The objective is to remove unwanted non-value adding waste in Business, Development, Security , Reliability and Operation in an automated fashion using an integrated people, process and tools/technology ecosystem. The tools are to be seen to reduce technical debt and maximize the speed of delivery of the right features.

Value for Money

All Indians , rich or poor, has an inclination to bargain and get the maximum value for money.There is a concept of 'Jugad Technology', which is like zero tool investment.Every indian wants discounts and expects things free of cost.

Open source tools and technology in DevOps is possibly the most appropriate in India - because India has no dearth of talented and capable IT people.

This does not however mean not using commercial tools.Commercial DevOps tools will have its own marketplace for enterprise DevOps.

Industry 4.0 , DevOps and India

There is a lot of buzz on Industry 4.0. DevOps is engrained in any new Technology or application development in the modern world.The question here is to what extent Indian companies will invest on DevOps competency development.

It is to be understood - accelerated outcome delivery is the need of the hour, DevOps is just designed to do that.DevOps is a horizontal in all the Pillars of Industry4.0

Security, Reliability, SRE in India

Due to the new wave of Atmanirbhar Bharat , there is a surge of IT product development.In Industry 4.0 : the new technology innovations is primarily computer based - where the computer controls the actual machine or group of machines downstream. These companies are using Data Science , Robotics to better understand and serve customers.

All Companies are IT companies now

Because of extreme computer interfacing of machines - it was necessary to even have a machine or automation run these automation. Hence with the rise of Automation for Automation in Business, IT becomes the key driver. Using IT effectively an entire business with optimized development and operations. The Definition of Dev and Ops can be contextual - for an IT system we understand the notion - however if we include business, then business becomes development and IT becomes operations.

Extending the concept - the society becomes development and business becomes ops. So DevOps is everywhere - sensors can be controlled in a DevOps pipeline intelligently.