Containers can help organizations achieve their business objectives quickly and efficiently. These software instances package up code and all its dependencies to enable applications to run quickly and reliably among multiple computing environments. This portability makes containers a great fit for microservices and other modern methodologies that support DevOps development processes.

When the pandemic hit, organizations with agile development frameworks such as DevOps had an advantage over competitors that didn’t: The speed and agility that DevOps provides in creating new applications let them quickly adapt to changing conditions. Those that weren’t able to employ DevOps had to develop new capabilities using less agile development processes, which generally take much longer. The success that organizations had with DevOps and containers helped solidify them as essential elements of an agile development mindset.

Using DevOps processes, a monolithic application that used to take three years to build can be broken down into a number of small applications, each of which can be developed much more quickly and easily. Features are developed and bugs are addressed rapidly, and new iterations of software are produced continuously.

IT governance is not cloud governance.

Every company that ventures into the cloud ultimately crosses into the blurred world of governance. IT governance encompasses a range of functions and knowledge and, in its own right, takes skill to balance needs versus productivity. With the addition of cloud technologies, organizations can expect a lot more knobs and dials that, in the end, form a complex attack surface if implemented incorrectly.

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.

As organizations look for opportunities to put data analytics to work, DevOps is one area that deserves attention. In many organizations, data scientists and software developers are still siloed, but bringing their talents together makes sense. Development informed by data can help teams in a number of ways.

The goal of DevOps is to shorten the time required to get ideas into practice by accelerating the development process in a quality-controlled way. Its methodology depends on a steady, reliable source of clean, organized and indexed data. Generating the right data during the DevOps process, and then using the resulting insights to inform the next iteration, can minimize error and increase the likelihood of success.

Analytics is a natural complement to the DevOps feedback loop, providing valuable insights that inform continuous improvement in decision-making. Collaboration, however, is essential. When developers know what data they need to collect, they can create code that will write logs to a file for analysts’ review. That requires not only joint planning but also clarity about what the goals are — both for development and for the business as a whole.

It’s no secret that software and applications drive business today — and the future is only going to be more app-driven. So, it’s imperative for businesses of all shapes, sizes and industries, whether cloud newbies or cloud natives, to be thinking strategically about how to develop their software. And to do that, business leaders need to be thinking about DevOps.

Yes, DevOps is a buzzword, but that doesn’t detract from its growing importance for business. To help our customers understand what DevOps is, we started a podcast, Simplifying DevOps.

The DevOps approach to software development is gaining great popularity with IT organizations. This approach, which places software developers and operations specialists side by side on project teams, creates flexibility, improves efficiency and results in reduced rework after code is deployed to production. The benefits of this collaborative approach are undeniable, but many organizations that have embraced DevOps are finding that their current approach pays insufficient attention to a critical component: cybersecurity.

Enter DevSecOps.

The DevSecOps approach to software development seeks to integrate the cybersecurity function into the DevOps model as an equal partner. When development teams do not include security professionals, they often find that the submission of their code for security reviews results in critical unexpected findings, resulting in costly rework and project delays.

Just as DevOps sought to build a collaborative culture between development and operations, DevSecOps seeks to extend the scope of that collaboration to include cybersecurity teams.