?? DevOps Trends (2023) ??

Top 7 DevOps Trends to Look Up in 2023

1. DevSecOps

With security being one of the most significant concerns in the digital age, enterprises have integrated the DevSecOps lifecycle to enhance it further. It has been used for streamlining governance and observability as well. ?

The main idea that DevSecOps stands for is the shift-left approach that security should follow instead of it being an afterthought. As per the latest DevSecOps trends, around 40% of Enterprises conduct the DAST test, 50% conduct the SAST test, and the rest scans dependencies and containers. ?

One very stark example that we can consider is Pokemon Go. Although Pokemon Go is one of the major game-changing phenomena in the gaming industry, it began to show some liability problems upon its initial launch. With over 800 million downloads by minor users all over the world, they were responsible for the protection of their privacy as per the GDPR rules. However, there was a twist in the tale. Pokemon go partnered with Niantic for its development, with whom it shared responsibilities regarding security compliance and development. Therefore, although a percentage of childcare security compliance, as well as the backend operations, went to Pokemon go, the application as a whole was governed by Niantic. ?

With the significant amount of shared responsibility and third-party data, instilling collaboration and security culture became a predominant practice. This led to the company adopting DevSecOps integrated automation when it came to security checks instead of manual monitoring of application privacy from the very first stage. This is how the cultural paradigm of Pokemon go helped protect the privacy of billions of children.

2. Serverless Computing

Serverless computing is a way to develop and run services and applications without taking servers into consideration. These applications do not need the managing of servers because they are built that way from the very developmental stage of the app. Over the years, it has come to be a widely used innovative approach to software deployment. As a matter of fact, the serverless market is estimated to reach $30 billion by the year 2030. Additionally, more than 50% of Enterprises that have cloud-based courses have integrated serverless computing in their systems.

The DevOps process has greatly benefited from the serverless computing approach. With added operability, it has successfully bridged the gap between Development and Operations. It also helped generate the DevOps pipeline code without needing the host to develop, test, and deploy.

One stark example is Autodesk, a company that specializes in designing software for Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Manufacturing. Autodesk has successfully streamlined faster development and facilitated quicker deployment by expanding its AWS footprints. One downside of using AWS is that it still needed a manual process that would take a minimum of two weeks to complete. With the growing number of accounts, it was difficult for Autodesk to sustain its optimum performance and work efficiency. This was when they decided to opt for AWS Dynamodb and AWS Lambda, which became an integral part of their serverless transformation. This significantly helped Autodesk to shorten the total time required for account creation from two whole weeks to a matter of ten minutes only.?

3. Microservice Architecture

Microservice architecture often referred to as microservices, is currently being extensively used in the IT sector. Customized to accommodate the latest DevOps market trends, it has successfully broken down the age-old mammoth-sized applications into more manageable pieces that are smaller. Successfully simplified development testing as well as deployment in operations. It has also streamlined the consistent and frequent delivery of software and applications. It has been easier and simpler to facilitate the DevOps processes and principles to improve the Holistic quality of products.

A popular example would be Coca-Cola which has produced over 3800 products on a global scale. Essentially the company used a legacy-based architecture that connects every entity belonging to various continents. Supporting their ever-increasing growth, however, became a major challenge. This is where the IT teams of Coca-Cola decided to use a DevOps-based approach that involved the use of microservices. This is one of the new trends in DevOps that helps create a separate area for concerns and reusable modules that help enhance the agility as well as the speed of deploying the product. Therefore, with microservice architecture, there was a significant reduction of data flow in the network, leading them to gain more time for scaling up to support more freestyle machines within a matter of minutes from weeks. ?

4. AIOps

MLOps and AIOps are two of the most renowned trending DevOps tools. They have been estimated to become a 40.91 billion dollar entity by the year 2026. Essential to optimize the DevOps operations to reap the benefits of high quality and quick release where MLOps and AIOps are important role-players. AIOps help automates IT processes and operations, whereas MLOps strengthens the development system of machine learning. Therefore, with AIOps, it is easy to identify the main cause of the problems that hamper operational productivity, and with MLOps, it is easy to optimize operations and enhance productivity. ?

This is one of the most widely used DevOps future trends, which has also been integrated into a platform named DRYiCE IntelliOps, developed by HCL. As a solution that addresses the full stack AIOps of the Enterprise as well as its observability requirements, it specializes in transforming the customers of HCL from reactive to proactive. They carried this out with the help of incident management and also by providing more visibility into the infrastructure. Moogsoft has supported this translation of customers into Agile business practitioners without HCL incurring additional costs of operations. This helped in the reduction of help desk tickets by 62%, MTTR by 33%, and also streamlined hassle-free cloud migration.?

5. Low Code Applications

Many robust enterprises have adopted a low-code DevOps approach which has been quite beneficial for teams. The low-code approach enables agility that provides every organization with a huge competitive edge in the demanding and fast-paced software market. Low-code platforms help companies and enterprises build applications without any export coding knowledge. This helps non-technical professionals to also have a hand in developing software via a visual interface that entirely manages the app development process. It helps users develop their logic and workflow just by dragging and dropping elements. This is one of the renowned DevOps future trends that has helped speed up the process of development and deployment just by creating simplistic and user-friendly applications. ?

There are many programming tools that are tasked with automating the deployment applications by readily interfacing with low-code platforms. They have also significantly helped with crucial DevOps practices like version control, QA, and even build validation. Being one of the best 2020 DevOps trends, the single-platform approach of this trend that has provided a "no" or a "low" code has also significantly helped DevOps teams work more efficiently, reducing complexity as a whole. The very term 'low code' means having to give lesser emphasis on coding, whereas DevOps means efficient collaboration. Therefore, an amalgamation of the two is bound to enhance development and deployment.?

6. GitOps

GitOps happens to be one of the best DevOps new trends that have been added to the DevOps workflow. It helps control, monitor, and automate infrastructure. Based on the Kubernetes paradigm, it has given IT operation managers and developers the ability to utilize Git for collecting and deploying several applications. GitOps takes all of the best DevOps practices, such as collaboration, version control Al, compliance, and CI/CD, into consideration and applies them to the infrastructure of automation. It additionally emphasizes increasing releases as well as consistent delivery to create, test, and deploy software fastly and with maximum efficiency. ?

One great example is the finance form called Mettle, powered by NatWest. It seeks to offer customers of small businesses applications that streamline payments by speeding them up and effectively managing their finances. Therefore, ensuring that every service is consistently running 24/7 is imperative in their business infrastructure. In one instance, the engineering team of Mettle was challenged to find a solution where they could deploy the newest features at the fastest pace without compromising on the CI/CD pipeline security as well as reliability. To enable this, Mettle had to partner with Weaveworks to adopt the GITOps approach. It helped Mettle to develop a self-service program that enabled engineers to focus more on delivering value via innovation without any help from the platform team assistance. This helped increase production by 50% and deployment by 25%. ?

7. Kubernetes

Kubernetes, often abbreviated as K8, is an extensible and portable open-source platform that helps in managing containerized services and workloads. It provides a continuous and autonomous container-based ecosystem for integration, allowing developers to scale up or down on the resources. This is one of the prime reasons why it has become one of the top DevOps trends in 2023. Newly, 48% of developers have turned to Kubernetes for container integration. On top of all, Kubernetes helps facilitate cross-functional action and make sure that there is minimum deployment downtime to align with the standard and the best DevOps practices. ?

A great example of this is Nordstrom Inc., an American luxury departmental store that is headquartered in Seattle. As in the e-commerce industry, agility, speed, and a phenomenal customer experience were vital to that company's principles. Therefore they began using Kubernetes to incorporate a complete DevOps transformation, the deployment of pipelines, as well as the implementation of consistent integration. This helped them considerably reduce the time required for deployment from 3 months to a matter of 30 minutes, in addition to enhancing operational efficiency.

(Information taken from Top 7 DevOps Trends of 2023 (knowledgehut.com)