Every organization these days is implementing DevOps, but not everyone is truly adopting the cultural change that it originates from. The proper framework needs to be charted out and followed to reap the most out of enterprise DevOps.
DevOps is an IT methodology that enables businesses to respond faster to market changes by automating manual processes, integrating tools and platforms, and increasing efficiency. Additionally, the cloud infrastructure helps reduce business costs while ensuring speed and security.
Amazon transitioned its physical servers to the cloud in 2010, and we all know how well that worked. While Netflix is running its over 700 microservices on AWS conveniently, the benefits of hosting payments infrastructure on AWS are vast too. Nasdaq recently migrated its U.S. options market to AWS. This article will outline how cloud-native enterprise solutions can help companies from Netflix to NASDAQ in implementing custom solutions for scalable and efficient enterprise operations.
How Does DevOps Enhance Enterprise Solutions?
DevOps is a highly effective way to achieve enterprise goals. Let’s have a look at the benefits of DevOps.
- Reduced Time to Market
Traditional software development takes a long time because it involves several teams working at different speeds and schedules. The process can be slow, expensive, inefficient, and often results in low quality. With DevOps, this problem can be resolved; all team members share the goal of creating high-quality software quickly so that you can launch products faster than ever. The ex-lead engineer at Amazon, John Jenkins, exclaims that enterprise DevOps has helped the organization save millions of dollars by achieving new software deployment every 11.6 seconds. - Improved Quality in Software Creation
In traditional development environments, multiple people work on separate parts of an app simultaneously. No single person oversees quality control throughout the process (single-point accountability). One team member may make a mistake or use the wrong code from another team member without checking it first. Any bugs they introduce into their part of the project go unnoticed until later, by which point fixing them has become much more costly. If they were caught earlier on by someone else responsible for testing all code before the release date—this problem would not exist.
Challenges in Creating Enterprise DevOps Solutions
The basic difference between DevOps and enterprise DevOps is that the latter focuses on building upon the benefits of the former and leveraging them to enhance scalability and reliability. Building a successful enterprise DevOps solution requires time, money, and resources. These challenges are not only limited to the development and maintenance but also the deployment. The success of an enterprise DevOps solution depends on how quickly you can deploy it without encountering any major issues.
However, deploying an enterprise DevOps solution becomes challenging when:
- many applications are involved, or
- infrastructure support is lacking for specific application components that need to be integrated into the project environment.
Bridging the Old and the New
As the DevOps field matures, some of the earlier concepts have been replaced by new ones. Enterprises that have embraced the more recent approaches to DevOps will be better positioned for success in their digital transformation efforts. However, many organizations are still struggling with bridging the gap between monolithic legacy systems and modern methods of CI/CD and deployment.
Here are a few ways to do it:
- Create a culture of change management
To succeed at moving from an organization that focuses on creating “big bang” releases once every year or two (if at all) to one that delivers value continuously and deploys code several times per day—requires cultural shifts throughout your organization. You must build trust among stakeholders so they feel comfortable taking risks when necessary.-
- Employees must have a voice in how work gets done
- Teams must collaborate across functional boundaries and organizational silos
- Project managers can no longer simply manage projects but must focus on driving change across the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC)
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- Get started with baby steps
Define pilot projects so that the teams involved can gain experience before tackling larger projects involving multiple stakeholder groups. Successful pilots lead directly to more ambitious initiatives that help boost both revenues and stakeholder morale. - Understand the organizational need
It is not a trend to adopt enterprise DevOps but to fulfill an actual requirement in the workflow. It is important to remember that organizations strive for the proactive availability and accessibility of resources rather than a mindless overhaul of functional systems.
Automation Everywhere
Automation is a crucial enabler of DevOps and helps achieve effective digital transformation. When you automate all the redundant tasks, your enterprise can move forward faster and smarter than ever before. ‘Autonomous Digital Enterprise’ is a concept that describes an enterprise that can operate without human intervention. This is due to a defined and organized system that works autonomously. This means that the business can handle its maintenance, security, and administration without requiring any direct human involvement.
As is evident, it’s not just about automation but also about freeing up human hours for better reallocation of resources. The enterprise-scale approach helps businesses achieve scale agility by leveraging automation and AI. It also helps improve IT operations, enhance employee experience, and boost business outcomes. Adherence to policies is also a crucial task under DevOps, and automation has been taken to another level by enterprise DevOps through tools such as Open Policy Agent (OPA). The need for this feature is deeply felt in the industry as the assessment of regulatory compliance for 59% of the organizations reportedly takes several months.
A suite of vital tools
Enterprise DevOps solutions should be grounded in a set of tools and products that support your organization’s goals and objectives. This can include infrastructure management with OSS dependencies to application performance management (APM) with the shift left approach. It’s essential to identify the tools necessary for your enterprise DevOps solution, as well as which tools work best together. A bird’s eye approach is required to focus on how the various components operate.
In addition to having the right tools and products, you’ll also need the right people on board who can put things in place effectively. We would be happy to help you with your migration journey to build an enterprise DevOps solution specific to your organizational needs.
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