DevOps Implementation: Benefits and Step-by-step Plan for Companies

Smooth collaboration between different development departments, high productivity among team members, and the ability to streamline processes... This is not a dream but a reality, thanks to DevOps! According to Market and Markets research, the DevOps market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 19,7% and reach $25.5 billion by 2028. Such growth will result from an increasing number of requests for faster app delivery and growth of microservices architecture. This statistic shows that DevOps has a huge potential. So, if you want to preserve your competitiveness, it's high time to include DevOps into your development strategy.

Basic Information about DevOps Implementation

So do you know what the term DevOps means? It’s not just a methodology, as many people like to say. It’s a strong culture of communication that aims to bridge a gap between development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) teams. From this point, DevOps is built on three pillars:

1) Culture:

Implementing DevOps is all about shared goals and responsibility between development, operations, and other relevant stakeholders. Such an approach lays the strong foundation for a common cooperative mindset of continuous improvement, learning, innovation and respect, making processes at all levels more effective.

2) Automation:

Ability to automate repetitive or manual tasks is on the forefront of the DevOps methodology. From code testing and integration to deployment and infrastructure management, automation reduces risks and number of human-prone errors, saves time, allowing teams to focus on more strategic and creative tasks.

3) Feedback Loops:

One of the main DevOps specifics are continuously gathering feedback from users, monitoring system performance, and learning from each development cycle. With timely feedback, teams can identify and solve the issues faster and become more flexible for potential changes.

To facilitate collaboration and accelerate software delivery, companies use the following DevOps practices:

• Continuous Integration (CI):
  CI involves automatically integrating code changes from multiple contributors into a shared repository. This process ensures that changes are tested and validated quickly, reducing the likelihood of integration issues down the line.
  It means that developers frequently integrate code changes into a shared repository, where they are tested thoroughly and validated quickly. Such an approach ensures that all the issues can be identified at early stages of the development process.
• Continuous Deployment/Delivery (CD):
  Continuous Deployment and Delivery is a logical extension to CI. It’s about automation of the deploying and releasing changes to software. CD allows teams to provide new features or updates to users as fast as possible, ensuring a smooth user experience.
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC):
  It's a method of managing and provisioning infrastructure through code rather than manual processes. It ensures that your infrastructure is consistently configured every time it's deployed, can be scaled easily and multiple team members can work on it simultaneously.

Such cloud platforms as Azure, Google Cloud, Salesforce, Amazon AWS provide a wide range of tools and integrations aimed at implementation of the practices described above.

Why Companies Need to Implement DevOps Practices

Imagine you're building a house: you have an architect who designs it (Development), and you have construction workers who build it (Operations). Now, what if the architect and the construction workers have poor communication, different views on the core goal, and ways to achieve it? Well, the final result may not align with your initial expectations, and any changes during the process will cause chaos, misunderstandings, and loss of time and budget.

So the main reason why companies need to implement DevOps is a more effective and seamless teamwork leading to the delivery of high-quality software. Now let’s dive into a deeper explanation of the benefits that your business can achieve thanks to DevOps.

What are the benefits of DevOps implementation?

DevOps is one of the best solutions both for big companies and recently founded startups. Let’s discover why:

1) Accelerated time to market

Let’s imagine a startup aimed at developing a new mobile app.

Traditional Setup

Development might finish, but it could take weeks to deploy the app due to manual testing and processes related to release.

DevOps

• Developers frequently integrate their code changes, ensuring that new features are always being added.
• Automated tests quickly validate the functionality of the app.
• Once validated, the app is automatically deployed to production. Users get access to new features without long waiting periods.
• If users identify any bugs, the feedback loop is quick. Developers can deploy fixes rapidly.

Result: Thanks to automation and parallel work streams, apps can enter the market much faster. Startups become more adaptable to changes as they can swiftly incorporate market trends. Users get access to new features and improvements faster, leading to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

2) Cost Optimization:

Think of your cloud resources on AWS as ingredients in a restaurant. You have servers, databases, and storage – each with its associated cost. Now, imagine your restaurant manager (DevOps) optimizing the menu (cloud infrastructure) to minimize costs without compromising on the quality of dishes (performance and reliability).

So how DevOps performs cost optimization on AWS?:

• it analyzes the actual usage of resources (like server capacity) and adjusts them to match the actual needs. If you're paying for a large server but only using a small portion, it's like buying too much food that goes to waste.
• it can commit to using specific reserved resources for a term, getting a significant discount compared to on-demand pricing.
• it provides auto-scaling thanks to setting up rules that dynamically adjust the number of servers based on demand
• it can use spot instances for non-critical workloads, taking advantage of lower costs with the understanding that they can be terminated with short notice.

Result: You're using your cloud resources efficiently, avoiding unnecessary expenses. Auto-scaling ensures that you can handle varying workloads without maintaining excessive resources during low-demand periods.

3) Transparency:

Distant work between teams with different cultural backgrounds and time zones leads to a significant number of misunderstandings and conflicting priorities. With tools like version control systems, issue trackers, and monitoring dashboards teams can get all the information about project progress in real time, define issues, monitor changes, and maximize focus on the tasks of high priority.

Result: High level of trust between development, operations team and stakeholders, dedication of each team member to a common goal, everyone is on the same page.

DevOps Implementation Plan

First, to implement DevOps, you should understand that it’s not just a technical task but a combination of cultural shifts, process changes, and tech enhancements. Below is a brief outline that will help you integrate DevOps smoothly:

1) Planning:

• assess the current state of things (development, testing, deployment)
• identify problems and core goals
• create a roadmap to achieve the defined goals

2) Take care of culture:

Think of the steps that need to be taken to create the environment of:

• shared responsibility
• respectful, convenient, and transparent communication and feedback
• encourage innovation and continuous learning

3) Selection and integration of tools:

• choose the most appropriate tools particularly for your company to uplevel the quality of all the processes at each stage of the delivery pipeline
• provide team trainings on how to utilize the chosen tools effectively

4) Implement the core DevOps practices (IaC / CI / CD)
5) Focus on security and compliance (automated security testing, vulnerability scanning, etc.)
6) Iterate and improve:
Create the mechanisms to measure the effectiveness of DevOps, hold regular retrospectives, iterate your processes to enhance productivity.

How AI Can Improve Your DevOps Implementation Process

AI plays a groundbreaking role in every aspect of the software development process, and DevOps is not an exception. If you want to maximize the potential benefits of DevOps, we strongly recommend empowering it with AI-based tools and mechanisms. Let's take a closer look at how AI can help you:

• Strengthen security. Imagine the security guard observing the normal behavior of people in a building. Similarly, AI in AWS analyzes the normal behavior of users, applications, and systems. It creates a baseline, allowing it to detect unusual activities that might indicate a security threat. Moreover, when AI identifies anomalies, it does not just provide alert; it takes immediate action. For example, it can automatically isolate compromised instances, revoke access, or apply security patches to mitigate the impact of a security incident.
• Predictive analytics. Thanks to thorough analysis of huge masses of information from development, testing, and production environments, AI can build patterns to predict potential bottlenecks before they occur.
• Better resource allocation. AI can analyze resource utilization and overall performance and allocate infrastructure resources based on the load demands.

Wrapping Up

So, DevOps is not just a methodology; it's a mindset that can propel startups and companies to success. By embracing DevOps practices, optimizing cloud costs, and integrating AI into your workflows, you're not just keeping up with the industry – you're staying ahead of the curve.

Begin your journey to success, improved collaboration, streamlined processes, higher productivity, and increased profits now! Contact us and our manager will provide you with all the necessary consultations on our DevOps services.