Along with technology, businesses are innovating and modernizing more quickly than ever before. Things are changing and companies in all different industries need to react. While some of these changes revolve around new technology or systems, this isn’t always the case. One of the biggest areas that changes has occurred is when it comes to new practices. One of the most popular practices in business today is DevOps.
DevOps refers to the collaboration and combination of those in development and operations. The primary goals of DevOps practices is to release software more frequently and reliably. This is done through infrastructure changes and changes to the process of the delivery and development of software. Many types of companies in different industries have taken to adopting DevOps practices to share responsibility between development and operations teams.
Implementation can take a lot of culture changes, changes to roles and labels, as well as a level of collaboration that teams might not be used to. So while DevOps is great and has many potential benefits, implementing it isn’t always easy. This is especially true in enterprise environments. An enterprise environment, in this context, is a large company moving billions of dollars or having to deal with millions of pieces of inventory. This could be something like a large bank, a large retail company or an insurance giant.
See, enterprise environments generally have a system or “way of doing things” that has been around for decades, and changing isn’t easy. They have waterfall processes, teams and initiatives that are set in stone and any deviation could be very costly. It is a massive environment and changing that environment in such a large way could seem like a huge challenge.
As a result, implementing DevOps in these enterprise environments might seem like a pipe dream, but it doesn’t have to be. Scaling DevOps is possible, as long as it is done intelligently. So while implementing DevOps can be risky, it can also bring about a lot of benefits to your company like faster deployment, better communication, and continuous delivery.
With that in mind, we’re now going to look at a few different tips that enterprise environments can use to implement DevOps more effectively.
Tips to Implement DevOps in Enterprise Environments More Effectively
Do it Little by Little
Scaling a business of any kind can be difficult, and this is especially true when it comes to DevOps. Going from traditional and legacy systems to a company-wide DevOps adoption will not happen overnight. If you try to rush it through, you might end up missing some things or the entire process could be a disaster. Instead, you need to implement DevOps practices over time. By implementing only certain branches or teams at a time, you will be able to test it out. This will let you see how it works instead of changing the entire company culture at once, which could have dire consequences.
Also, by implementing DevOps little by little, you will shown potentially skeptical employees or investors the benefits in real time. Soon enough, your entire company will not only have adopted DevOps practices, but have had the time to work out the kinks that you may have glossed over if everyone made the switch at once.
Use Tools
Without a doubt, one of the most important impacts that technology has had on business is the creation of apps and tools. There are thousands of different tools that exist to help businesses of all sizes. Some make accounting easier, some improve communication, and some can help your business stay organized. Simply put, each business likely have several tools they use to stay on top of their games.
As you could imagine, there are a variety of tools that can help companies implement and adopt DevOps. There are tools that can speed up delivery, allow for greater team collaboration and even tools that can handle everything your project needs.
Automation is Your Friend
In addition to tools, automation in the world of enterprise DevOps is incredibly important. Automation can allow for a more rapid execution of your processes, delivery and releases. Automating everything not only increases the speed of your operation, but also helps with infrastructure changes, audit and governance, as we see in this resource on infrastructure monitoring – track and analyze infrastructure | AppOptics.
While automation can be helpful, it is important not to solely rely on it going forward. Automation and tools alike are meant to help the DevOps process and practices, but it is still up to you and your team to do your parts, as well.
In conclusion, hopefully this article has helped you understand DevOps in an enterprise environment. DevOps is the way of the future for many companies and can help businesses thrive in a number of different ways. While implementing it within an enterprise environment is tough, doing so can bring about many benefits for the company.
