Is DevOps purely for the Cloud?

DevOps has been linked mainly to Cloud (PaaS predominantly) and the benefits this brings to develop more quickly and more reliably. But is the industry missing an opportunity here, there are certainly more voices who think we may be.

I think we can all agree DevOps is a mindset that requires the integration of key stakeholders in an aligned and integrated team utilising automation and other tools to deliver agility to the Customers Business reducing the time to market.

But is it inextricably linked to Cloud or are there lessons and components of DevOps which can be used to make on premise / more traditional Services more agile? I would say yes and we need to think wider. The DevOps mindset can actually be applied regardless of platform, if, and this is the big IF, the level of integration and mindset alignment can be achieved and justified (financially or by business benefit).

So Platform is not a barrier to DevOps models and the ability to do faster Changes / Releases.

So the question ultimately is speed, what is the optimum speed for change to support the Business needs? The requirement for speed is back to the fundamental of IT alignment with the Business.

So why are we not seeing the DevOps approach being tailored by the wider industry and not just Cloud?

The emergence of the model has been driven by some of the shining examples of agility, Amazon, Netflix etc who as part of the Cloud and Digital revolution have show how DevOps can be utilised to not just improve agility but also quality. Because of these company names I think we associate (rightly or wrongly) DevOps with new wave technologies only. 

IT Agility in a Cloud context has a number of definitions but deep routed in this, once you remove the platform element, is removing operational road blocks, division into micro Services, automation and adopting the DevOps mindset. I would argue that these proven concepts could be adopted on existing back end / legacy systems. Whilst we will never achieve releases in minutes there is scope to improve the often cumbersome approaches associated with large on premise applications. 

Many large IT systems which are customised are still traditionally supported using separate Towers (Dev, Infra, AM etc) sometimes across suppliers. This works well but can be costly and in most cases certainly not agile with releases being timed in months rather than hours / minutes. This is justified by the levels of regulatory requirements, business process complexity and risk which require levels of testing and Service assurance to prevent business disruption and financial loss or penalty.

But what if we adopted some of the DevOps principles e.g. one integrated team (regardless of Supplier / Tower), with an innovation mindset that worked as one to do things more quickly? What if we looked through the same DevOps lens at automation (automated deployment, automated Quality Assurance, automated system builds). What if we broke down the barriers to put the developers (bug fix or new build and ultimately the business) at the front of the equation? What if we define the high touch elements and strive to make them light touch?

All sounds great but what about the cost. Obviously most CIOs have cost as a driver but they would be remiss not to seriously explore the lessons learnt from DevOps.