DevOps is a set of practices that combines agile methodologies of software development with rapid IT delivery and automates the processes between the two to shorten the systems development lifecycle.
DevOps works on the principles of:
- Streamlined workflows
- Real-time feedback mechanism
- Continuous delivery and integration
It delivers high-performance deployments at faster rates through a combination of strategies, tools, and practices. DevOps is parallel to Agile methodologies and Lean approaches and closely integrates all siloed processes within an organization to automate manual tasks, build accountability within development and operations teams, and shorten entire product/service lifecycle design, development, testing, deployment, quality assurance to product support.
It can automate infrastructure so that you can deploy faster as an enterprise and save time and money. Bridging the gap between software teams and IT infrastructure is one of the biggest goals of DevOps practices. It helps enterprises generate more revenue while increasing productivity.
List of DevOps Benefits for Enterprises
- Better collaboration
DevOps enables all aspects and departments of a company to align together and coordinate smoothly. It brings about a cultural change in the workplace, enabling the sharing resources, making collaboration an essential part of teamwork. IT, business, and operations teams can coordinate much faster, with transparency resulting from lesser hoops to jump and fewer bottlenecks. Combined workflows shorten the timelines for delivery while communication becomes easier due to the breaking down of interdepartmental silos. Everyone remains on the same page.
- Speed, Improved frequency of deployment
DevOps is essentially a set of methods to ensure continuous delivery and fast feedback cycles. Enterprises have everything to gain from faster development cycles as coding is not only improved but also turnaround time is reduced. Process automation, transparency of infrastructure, and integration allow for regular deployment which helps enterprises to be more productive and profitable. Also increases cross-functional skills aided by flexibility and open approaches help achieve faster time to market. Since everything is monitored and reported in real-time, nothing escapes the eye of the developers, which allows for fewer errors as well. Working with incremental steps, small batch sizes are simpler, less risky, easier to test, and deploy. DevOps shortens lead times by using CI/CD pipelines instead of manual releases.
- More Innovation
The DevOps system is designed to run as a self-sustaining mechanism, implementing solutions seamlessly without much external or internal support; there is more innovation scope. Employees are benefited from automation and can devote time to exploring new ideas and immersing in experimental concepts. At the same time, they are motivated to continuously learn and improve due to shorter feedback and delivery cycles. This leads to happier and satisfied teams and fosters a culture of innovation across the enterprise.
- Defect detection at earliest stages
Enterprises devote a lot of people (and man-hours) to test and debug codes. Owing to DevOps, defects are easily noticed at the early stages because a lot of code is written and corrected frequently instead of large sets being checked less frequently. The changes are made across the entire system across processes thus it eliminates the need to course-correct across the board. There is also the benefit of automated testing. This also leads to reduced time-to-recovery. If testing is done at the requirements stage itself, the cost also reduces.
- Enhanced customer satisfaction
According to Dzone.com, “78 percent of users who paired agile and DevOps reported an increase in customer experience, versus only 58 percent of agile-only users”, while companies using DevOps “improved customer satisfaction by an additional 29 percent”. Shortened product cycles lead to low-cost product development and low pricing for the customers. This, paired with superior quality assured by DevOps, leads to complete customer satisfaction, giving them all the value for money they expected and more.
- Scalability
Scalable and high-performance deployments are made possible by DevOps. Companies must configure systems in ways that they’re flexible and enable scalability when the demand is high in order to accommodate resource consumption. However, DevOps can help you scale up owing to its very core features of full communication between departments, faster recovery times, and streamlined deployment with minimum hurdles and code failures. Because goals are shared, risks are mitigated and automation is well-implemented, scalability becomes easier for enterprises.
- Reliability of services
To provide reliable and continued services to the customer is the top priority for enterprises. DevOps ensures this in many ways. Delivery is broken down into smaller components, and continuous growth is supported by DevOps strategies even though the project may be large scale and increases pressure on the system. Updates, new releases, and changes can be incorporated quickly while maintaining the integrity of the existing data, systems, and processes intact.
- Stability
DevOps follows the approach of continuous delivery and integration which keeps the enterprise’s internal ecosystem stable and efficient. The teams are synchronised in their approach so that a solution can be formed even at the beginning of a problem through streamlined processes.
Enterprises must evaluate the challenges of DevOps before considering it as a service strategy since every organization has a lot of existing structural bottlenecks to be addressed before a lean structure can be adopted. Leadership teams need to accept that a cultural shift is necessary for the success of DevOps. Security should also be a factor to pay attention to since DevOps tools use cloud services.
With proper planning and infrastructure reorganization, enterprises can attain maximum advantages from DevOps.
