Is NoOps the end of DevOps?

Nowadays, one type question that keeps popping up in my feeds is things like “NoOps vs. DevOps”, “How NoOps replaces DevOps”, “Is NoOps the end of DevOps” and more.

So I wanted to clarify one point regarding if and how NoOps succeeds DevOps.

DevOps has indeed been a revolution, but the inherent difficulties establishing a DevOps culture and environment shied away some people from it.

When the concept of NoOps has emerged, people tried to embrace is as if it will eliminate all the complexities of DevOps while providing its full benefits.

However, NoOps does not fit that description at all for two reasons:

• NoOps is not the next iteration of DevOps
• NoOps is not something magical

What is NoOps if it is not the next generation DevOps?

The article titled “What is NoOps and How to Achieve NoOps…” summarizes it all too well.

In the simplest way, NoOps can be considered as integrating and automating (wherever possible) DevOps processes. In this sense, it is perceived as an alternative to DevOps or sometimes even as “DevOps” killer, but, it is more like an extension and further streamlining of the DevOps concept.

Indeed, when NoOps is implemented and used in the right way and in the right conditions, it is as beneficial and productive as the name suggests.

However, it requires the right tools and preferably a full cloud presence and it should not be considered as a silver bullet for DevOps needs.

So, NoOps is not that magical solution that eliminates the hassles of DevOps. It is a more refined and cloud-native way of approaching DevOps for certain use cases.

NoOps is not the end of DevOps or the next phase of the DevOps revolution. It is more of an extension of it in highly automated use cases.

So until, someone develops a DevOps AI, which can truly automate every DevOps process from setting up the environment to the end user deployment, NoOps will be applicable for repetitive and easier-to-automate use cases that usually take advantage of the cloud.

In the short-term, we can expect that NoOps will live in tandem with DevOps.