Many organizations are eager to employ DevOps to shorten the time between application development and production, but often they aren’t sure how to start. A useful analogy would be a group of people who have watched soccer on TV but never actually played it. Imagine gathering those people together and saying, “Now you’re a soccer team. Go play a match!”

Would they be able to figure out how to play effectively? Or would they be better off hiring a coach, who could teach them the moves and strategies to progress down the field and score goals?

IT teams adopting DevOps face a similar challenge; they’re being asked to play a new game. This is especially true with DevOps, because it isn’t a tool but rather a set of behaviors and processes — essentially, a culture, as our colleagues Rachel Arey and Mitch Krombach often point out on the podcast Simplifying DevOps (Mark appears in the Automation episode).

Getting people to change their behavior isn’t easy. A partner can be a valuable ally, providing insight and guidance as organizations make their way toward their goals.

In 2019, Cisco announced the new DevNet Associate certifications, along with some other changes to the certification structure. This clearly indicated the importance of customization and automation within the realm of Cisco products, as well as within the IT industry as a whole.

What separates companies in today’s marketplace is the ability to provide services that require multiple integrations, custom applications and automation. These can all be implemented with programmability, and achieving a DevNet certification is a great way to begin the journey.

Since March 2020, retailers have made Herculean efforts to meet the moment of the COVID-19 crisis, implementing new tools and processes to help customers stay safe and still get what they need, when they need it.

Even as we signs that the pandemic is beginning to wind down, retailers will need to continue to innovate and build on these systems that customers have come to expect. Many customers have spent the past year largely avoiding physical stores, so the retailers that can make shoppers feel welcome and safe — in short, those that make customers feel like they want to come back even if they don’t strictly need to — will be the ones to succeed in the future. Here are several ways they can achieve this objective.

Cybersecurity isn’t a product, or even a collection of products. It’s a practice. On some level, IT and business leaders know this. And yet, we continue to see organizations purchase powerful security solutions and then fail to maximize the potential of those tools. When organizations implement best-of-breed solutions but then don’t pay close attention to how those tools are actually used, money is wasted, and valuable data and systems are left vulnerable to attack.

Taking the following considerations into account when evaluating your organization’s cybersecurity infrastructure can help to optimize its effectiveness.

Last August, I wrote about changes with Wi-Fi 6E. Now, nine months later, it’s worth a quick revisit as we’re on the cusp of seeing releases from major enterprise vendors.

Emergency operations centers are a vital resource for state and local governments, and they are starting to expand to their next logical iteration: virtual EOCs. These online, often cloud-based centers allow remote stakeholders to see what’s happening at a brick-and-mortar EOC. Virtual centers can also serve as EOCs in their own right, providing a virtual space for stakeholders to coordinate and share information.

Interest in virtual EOCs and virtual access to EOCs predates the pandemic. However, the events of the past year have reaffirmed the importance of being able to bring stakeholders together remotely, as well as the value of collaborative, real-time data analysis. In addition, virtualization enables participants to maintain social distancing without compromising their ability to work together to manage a crisis.