DevOps is a software development approach that has gained immense popularity in the IT sector over the last decade. Bringing the operations and development team on the same page offers numerous enterprise- and team-level benefits including better communication, refined collaboration, and more.
Many students and professionals pursuing DevOps trainings to upgrade their skillset are expected to be aware of the latest practices and principles that are more important than ever in 2019. This brings us to the top trends that the industry is going to experience with the advancements in the DevOps technology.
DevOps to NoOps
The shift towards NoOps (no operations) is on the rise and likely to gain further momentum from 2019. Normally, when users pursue an IT resource like a test environment, they rely on a separate operations team to cater the request. As the wait for the request to be processed can be frustrating, the NoOps personnel can handle the job smoothly. Through smart automation that facilitates self-service, empowers the business, and produces a transparent channel for the operations users managing it, the task is accomplished with positive results. In other words, users can utilize the IT resources without consuming much time. Hence, various business personas are also improved in the process.
Integration of AI and DevOps
DevOps is becoming increasingly data-centric. The immediate rise in applications provided through a cloud-based SaaS model indicates not only about enterprises and IT teams gathering more data than ever on how users are interacting with apps, but also on how those apps are delivered.
The data can now be used to measure the organization’s delivery throughput and stability using parameters including deployment frequency and lead time for changes, along with the time required to restore a service and change failure rate respectively. An area that is perfectly set for artificial intelligence and machine learning to take over.
Incorporating ML in in the software delivery lifecycle helps companies in comprehending and evaluating where blockages, bottlenecks, or capacity problems are occurring, or most probably will happen in the future. In doing so, it allows for predictive recommendations to streamline and optimize the delivery operations appropriately.
We expect to see the AI and data science professionals work more aggressively with the DevOps personnel in 2019 and provide enhanced efficiencies and detailed insights associated with software delivery and testing process. This particular alignment is important for enterprises to promptly act in delivering new features and functionalities to the customers.
Integrated Security: DevSecOps
DevSecOps is another major practice that will gather further strength from now on. The rising “Shift-Left” in the DevOps technology indicates that rather than taking security processes as an afterthought at the delivery process end, the focus should be more on writing a secure code in the first place. The idea is to incorporate operations security and product concerns at the initial stage in the continuous delivery pipeline, while facilitating a faster testing and remediation cycle.
Therefore, enterprises will work with security professionals to acquire maximum output out of security tools and platforms for incorporating security policies into an automated, integrated DevSecOps environment. An environment that can automatically catch security loopholes and safely analyze whether the code can reliably progress towards to a customer-based environment through quality gates. The purpose is to enable the value throughput to customers without compromising the security system.
Rise in Containerized Microservices
Organizations use microservices as great means to provide quality features to the customers. The approach permits a larger system to be divided into manageable, loosely coupled components that can be enabled and provided through containers, which are lightweight and isolated in nature. The blend tends to act as a rapid medium for providing change.
As enterprises strive to become more agile, their adoption of containerized microservices will follow the trend. Consequently, this tempts the employment of open source platforms such as Google’s Kubernetes. This trend is likely to continue besides the enhanced usage of functions-as-a-service.
Previously, developers used to rely on a provisioned infrastructure as a platform to run their services. However, key cloud computing services are gradually replacing that infrastructure for the developers. Today, developers have the freedom to write a cloud-native, serverless function without worrying about the infrastructure it will operate upon. Yes, cloud-based functions have their restrictions, but as they progress, their capacity to solve complex problems will also refine proportionately.
Testers are Expected to Learn Coding
Testers who are well-versed in coding and automating scripts are in a serious demand in the DevOps market. On the other hand, testers will be considered a huge failure if they aren’t equipped with coding skills and ability to automate scripts.
This is mainly due to the reason that manual testing will out of demand because of its time-consuming procedures. Remember, besides ensuring an efficiency increase, automation testing also guarantees that the features and tools are delivered much quickly in the market.
Better Focus on Continuous Delivery
The inclusion of the Continuous Delivery approach in the software development market will acquire further attention, especially across large organizations in 2019. It will happen when leadership teams will start considering correlation of the major technical processes that enables the continuous delivery approach with the overall business engagement and performance.
The 2018 State of DevOps Report by Puppet and Splunk provides some detailed insights stating how IT teams can act as a potential driving force for business performance. The plan is to move forward with a changed mindset rather than being taken as another costly expense by the business.
Conclusion
Summing all the above trends, we can safely conclude that the DevOps technology will only fuel up with time. Both students and professionals pursuing IT trainings such as DevOps certifications find it very helpful when they stay informed through authentic, quality online sources. Also because such professionals are required to stay updated with the latest trends and learn how the software development industry is meeting a wider audience with people working more closely through changes such as NoOps, Low Code, and Platform-as-a-service.