DevOps For Business: Five Reasons Why It Makes Sense

The term “DevOps” has been creeping into the public discourse for some time now. Indeed there are dozens of articles on DevOps to be had. All you need to do is let Google do the walking! However, when we talk about DevOps for business, it can help to know precisely what we’re talking about.

DevOps for Business: A Primer

It’s always best to start at the beginning, right? So let’s start with the basics: What is DevOps? Thankfully, we’ve answered that question in earlier pages and you can see our take on it here.

In a nutshell, however, the answer is this: We see DevOps as a set of practices which focus on reliability and repeat-ability. Of delivering technology from “idea” to production to implementation in as fast, efficient, and automated a way as possible.

Because we’re able to say “we see DevOps” as x,y,z; it’s a pretty good indication that the definition is at least somewhat subjective. To be even more brief, we see DevOps as a combination of people and practices which, when combined efficiently, produces optimum results.

When it comes to DevOps for business, what does that mean? It means you can work quickly and efficiently to implement your solutions while making better, more well-informed decisions along the way.

DevOps approaches include the continuous delivery of software components such as microservices rather than large-scale, periodic updates.

Think of the early days of operating systems such as Windows. Got Windows 95? Now it’s time for 98. Wait, Windows 2000 is just around the corner.

Contrast that with the operating systems of today where large-scale, new inceptions are far more rare and continuous releases, automatically updated, are far more common.

What Does This Mean?

Alright, let’s talk in plain English. What does all of this mean when it comes to DevOps for business applications? There are a few benefits / perks to highlight.

Rapid Deployment / Time To Market

Faster development, quicker release. This may be the key perk of taking a DevOps approach. With an emphasis on collaboration, innovation, and development; new software and processes can be deployed much more quickly.

Teamwork

Because after all, teamwork makes the dreamwork, right? With a DevOps approach, your teams collaborate and innovate much more frequently. A DevOps mindset eschews the “silo” approach. Teams no longer develop tools or processes in a vacuum. Instead, it is a collaborative effort. Beyond being a good “team-building” approach, this means your teams work more closely together more frequently and develop a deeper, more high-level understanding of the complete picture as opposed to just their specific tasks.

More Effective Time Management

Your DevOps for business approach will allow for better time management and productivity. Rapidly deploying and innovating in a stable environment will free up your team’s time to work on other pressing tasks or innovations. Continuous improvements will keep your system moving efficiently in the proper direction.

Rapid Problem Solving

What does this mean also? Rapid problem solving. Issues which arise are more readily identified, contained, and manged in a DevOps environment. This can save both time and money while at the same time provide an overall improvement to business processes.

Overall, this leads to:

Less Downtime

By any definition, less downtime is a good thing. Less downtime for your systems, more quantifiable downtime if and when it does occur, and by definition: more up-time.

DevOps for Business: A Winning Play

As DevOps continues to ingratiate itself into the way we think and work, taking a proactive approach to establishing a proper DevOps framework for your business is most certainly a winning formula.

Don’t get us wrong, DevOps can be disruptive at first. It may require broad consensus and employee buy-in to get started. And there may be some bumps along the way. However, that is also kind of the point, right?

A team coming together, united, with a set of common goals and a shared approach to accomplishing those goals.

Originally published at https://introspectdata.com on July 29, 2019.