Why Cloud Demands Devops

For some, the words “software development" evoke fear, loathing and flashbacks to failed or costly (or both) projects. But the emergence of cloud has spawned a renaissance in how development happens, and channel providers need to understand how to help customers revamp legacy applications for the modern era.

You’ve probably seen the term “DevOps." The movement was coined in 2009 as a reaction to decades of failed development projects. DevOps, at its core, is a cultural movement in response to the mistakes commonly made by large agencies developing software that went over budget, continually missed deadlines and then did not meet user requirements. DevOps aims to fix that.

DevOps found initial traction among large public cloud service providers, where much of what used to be considered infrastructure is now part of the code. The lessons learned from Google, Amazon, Twitter and Etsy are now directly applied to new software development projects for the federal agencies that I work with. The concepts are proven and ready to move downstream to small and midsize companies in all sectors and verticals.

The DevOps approach emphasizes communication, collaboration and integration between software developers and IT operations. In the past, these groups typically worked as silos. DevOps acknowledges the interdependence of code and infrastructure. It helps an organization produce software and IT services more quickly, with frequent iterations.

What is tough for most agencies is the cultural change DevOps demands. Shared ownership and collaboration are cornerstones. Functional silos must be broken down so applications can adapt more quickly to user needs. This can only happen with close teamwork.

Agencies also struggle with significant talent gaps. The supply of DevOps engineers comes nowhere near meeting current demand. Progressive federal CIOs have been building teams and augmenting their staff with partners; I expect this to become the norm with all businesses.

Let’s look at how to develop a DevOps practice.

First, you need to lose the idea of coding as a mysterious black box and demand that all software be intuitive for users, reliable, provide easy-to-interpret results and visual cues, and be able to run on modern, virtualized infrastructure.