DevOps - an emerging trend in IT

In the last decade or so, organisational infrastructure has been undergoing a change. Businesses are striving to become more agile, doing away with silos.

Traditionally, the IT department was an isolated function - however, this set up is fast eroding making way for a leaner and more connected way of doing this thanks to Development Operations (DevOps).

What is DevOps?

DevOps is an up and coming field, which combines system administration and operations, in order to make the organisational processes and procedures quicker and more effective.

According to an article published in the Cutter IT Journal, DevOps is a bridge that connects the project management teams that build complex systems and the operations teams that maintains these sophisticated solutions.

While the former are judged based on the delivery of the end product, the latter are assessed on sustainability and stability. This is where things get complicated - the developers never end up using the systems they create so for them reliability is not as high on the priority list as it is for the operations teams.    

This is where DevOps can help by combining quality with software development and operations. 

The idea of continuous delivery

Essentially, DevOps aims to provide continuous delivery without glitches. This means businesses need to reduce production cycle time so they can get feedback from their users and reduce the risk and cost. Ultimately, this helps the organisation achieve a level of maturity whereby systems can be released on demand with zero risk.

"Deployments become non-events (because they are done on a regular basis), and all team members experience a steadier pace of work with less stress and overtime. IT waits for the business, instead of the other way around," explains the Cutter IT Journal.

Receiving feedback from software that works reduces business risk, helping IT to become further integrated with the organisation.