Evolving Trends in DevOps

Here we are in 2022 and DevOps continue to play center stage to bring value to businesses. The pandemic played a crucial role to bring technology to the fore-front and let people take leaps in their technical journey. Before the pandemic, for example, the concept of online meetings was not wide accepted (although it had existed for a long time). Fast forward to today, and the world has seen a fundamental shift in the way people interact with each other. From students attending schools virtually to fortune 500 companies managing global economy, everyone is a part of the technical drive. Even after the pandemic is over, the new evolving technical trend is here to stay.

With the availability of IT Innovations in every aspect of life, DevOps teams are central at providing creative solutions and help businesses acheive their goals. In the following sections, we will touch upon the latest trends in DevOps and see how these trends are shaping the lives around us.

Embracement of Cloud Technology

Companies continue to embrace cloud technologies at a phenomenal rate. Gone are the days when budgets were allocated ahead of time to purchase IT infrastructure to ensure business continuity. Instead companies are now focused on a consumption-based model where companies only pay for the services used. Users are only charged for as long as the resources are used. Once the resources are decommissioned, user are not charged any further.

Having said that, not all companies are using the Cloud in an efficient manner. For example, for many companies, cloud is mostly about shifting their servers to Virtual Machines in the cloud. However; cloud has much more to offer. Cloud and DevOps in particular allows development team to collaborate, develop and deliver business applications in a coherent manner. Cloud also allows companies to integrate existing on-premises infrastructure with cloud infrastructure through a hybrid model. This way, any existing infrastructure which was paid-for upfront, are integrated with the new cloud infrastructure seamlessly.

DevOps Pipelines

A pipeline is simply a set of practices implemented to develop, test, approve and deploy applications. Pertinent to note is the practice of Approval before deploying applications. An approval could be a set of rules which the application must meet before it is deployed to production severs. For example, the approval process may include conformance to OWASP Security practices for an applications. Pipelines include moving code to repositories, performing automated testing on new code and deploying code to testing, staging and production server. Another benefit of using pipelines is automation. Most of the DevOps tasks are automated using workflows which remove human interaction. This makes the process less prone to errors and ensures standardization across the development landscape.

Security Paradigm

Applications built using DevOps are now embracing security as a fundamental requirement. Cloud providers provide Legal, Regulatory and Security compliance as part of their services. This also means applications must consider security at every step of development. For example, if a pipeline requires an application to adapt certain security practices, it won't allow the application to be deployed until the security requirements are met. DevOps applications can make use of security scanners, frameworks and automated tests to ensure security is baked into every layer and step of development.

Project Management Features

One of the key features of using DevOps is the availability of Project Management tools and processes to teams at no extra costs. DevOps has brought Agile and Lean methodologies to the fore front of development. It offers Agile Boards, Progress Charts, Personalized Dashboards, and Custom Reports for teams to collaborate and deliver value to businesses. Teams can track and monitor their progress and take corrective actions if needed.

In conclusion, DevOps has provided a fundamental shift in how projects are managed, coordinated and deployed to help businesses achieve their strategic gaols. The coming time will only see an increased used of DevOps and wider adaptability.