Most people who are good with cloud technology are also good with devops. That’s not an accident: It’s impossible to get the full value out of cloud computing unless it’s done in the context of automated devops.
Why is automated devops so important? It’s a competitive advantage that creates faster time to market. Organizations that require weeks or month to deploy software are at a distinct disadvantage.
That’s why cloud platforms were built with automated devops in mind. For example, there are automated devops tools native to Amazon Web Services, and AWS makes sure to mature those tools along with the cloud platform. Automated devops has a track record in the cloud. Some of the best and brightest in our industry have tested and deployed the tools that will prove invaluable to your automated devops organization.
If that’s not good enough for you consider your own automated devops organization, imagine the alternative: To make the most of deploying applications to a central hosting platform— that is, a cloud—you need to set up the infrastructure to continuously update each application. Think about the new features and bug fixes that are put into an application after going through a process—which includes continuous testing, integration, and deployment—then consider doing that process manually. The words “nightmare” and “impossible” come to mind, if an automated devops organization is not in place.
I think we all understand that value by now, but the word “mandatory” is a hard concept for most enterprises. The bottom line is you can’t get the full value of the cloud if you don’t build and use an automated devops organization and technology stack.
Those leery of automated devops talk about the “destructuring” of IT that occurs when automated devops happens. But that’s about protecting empires, not serving their employer. Automated devops means the focus is more on innovation and less on application development governance. Devops reduces the complexity, removes bottlenecks, and automates as much as possible. If this means breaking down the organization from six levels to two, so be it (sorry, VP of development who loves to stare at the org chart with his or her name on the top).
If you’re not sold, you’ve yet to move a substantial number of applications to the cloud. I suspect there will be enterprises that resist automated devops for now. However, the need to adopt automated devops will become more obvious and may even occur organically over time. But why wait? Do your research and get ahead of the curve. Automated devops is in your future.