2020 is a year that will not be forgotten, at least not in a hurry. Covid-19 has forced many business enterprises to endure losses, some relying on factories and plants have had to totally or partly close them down, even those that are technologically inclined. The confidence most businesses have in the conventional workplace has greatly declined. Covid-19 pandemic validates companies akin to GitLab as a visionary in their adoption of remote-working. However, no business or company, globally speaking, can in any confidence declare that they are prepared for the consequences of a pandemic on the economy of the world.

Information Technology occupations would grow 12 percent from 2018 to 2028, says the U.S. Bureau Of Labor Statistics. This growth is far faster than the average of all other professions. With the current affairs of the world, remote work is temporarily compulsory for millions of workers around the globe. This makes a significant observation, the global business landscape has changed and would definitely not revert to its original state, the question a business owner should be asking is how do I ensure the tide does not erase my business?

One answer with immediate expediency is DevOps.

The nature of DevOps makes it suitable for remote workspaces. It does not matter if the workers of a company function remotely or utilize the conventional office.

DevOps and Remote-Work

This partnership is what a typical “meant to be” looks like, DevOps features automated software development methodology which can be utilized, whether remotely or on-premise.

This evolution is what would ensure the survival of companies that take steps to be more flexible and creative. So, then what does DevOps have to offer? Agility, mobility, efficiency, automation, communication are a few of the benefits of DevOps.

Feasibility of DevOps

DevOps is capable of adapting to the malleability of the global economy. Over the years, companies producing technological gadgets have relied on stable software to assuage the consumption well of the world population. As the pursuit of advancement in technology intensifies, the need for more reliable software increases, and at this point, DevOps is here to normalize the situation. According to the Upskilling 2020 Report as a result of DevOps, many initiatives have sprung up, and the challenges these initiatives face are the availability of skilled resources and changing the organization’s way of working, which would question their status quo. Therefore, the organization must undergo a remarkable transformation and close the skill gap to engage DevOps fully.

DevOps Institute affirms that the skill gap is relatively wide because it will be tricky to find individuals proficient in both Development and Operations, which is the technical aspect. Soft skills are another aspect these same people must equally excel in. Finally, exerting effort to build these hybrid DevOps humans, without any confidence in their loyalty will be a waste of time and resources.

Benefits of DevOps during COVID-19

• Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD):

DevOps goal is to ensure increased speed in continuously integrating code into an available shared and simple to access repository. This frequent integration allows for an approach meant to allow uptakes quickly. The crucial aim of continuous integration is to find and address bugs faster, improve software quality, and reduce the time it takes to validate and release new software updates. It also quickens the process of removing the code stored in the repository and continuously delivering it to production. Continuous Delivery is a technique that incorporates development, testing, and deployment procedures into a streamlined process. All these processes are hugely reliant on the automotive capacity of the DevOps. The purpose of DevOps while combining operations and development and reducing the time it takes between making changes to the system and seeing the result of this change is to do all of these things and, at the same time, continue high-quality product delivery. All this is also possible because of the ability of DevOps to automate the continuous delivery and integration pipeline for delivery. This allows both the developers and operators to develop and input code nearly at once.

• Infrastructure as Code: Infrastructure as code is a practice in which code and software development techniques such as version control are used to condition and manage infrastructure. The cloud’s API-driven model facilitates exchange between developers and system administrators in order to interact with infrastructure programmatically, and at scale, rather than manually setting it up and configuring resources. Since infrastructure is made up of code, engineers can interact with the infrastructure. Infrastructure and servers can be duplicated continually or updated on versions.
• Separating Release from Deployment: this allows businesses to enter a novel software service, or it could be a product during software development, this could incite a financial crisis if it were to be done ordinarily. But DevOps allows companies to take bold steps even in an unstable situation. The separation of Release from Deployment, also referred to as Decoupling, is handled by the team handling products, and they manage the risk of releasing features to the customers. At the same time, the engineering division continues to deliver software. In other, to utilize this specific design of DevOps, a tool such as a feature toggle software is best employed.
• Continuous Monitoring: The final stages of DevOps focuses on examining the entire process. The objective of monitoring is detecting the troublesome areas of a process and analyzing the feedback from the team and end-users to note occurring problems and better improve the quality of the product.
• Communication and Collaboration: this is one of the benefits of DevOps that directly deals with human resources. Communication is needed to get everyone into a collective mental space for easy dissemination of ideas and information. It is also crucial in welcoming new individuals on board; this creates an avenue for them to bring the best out of themselves. When the distribution of knowledge becomes a part of the team, people are encouraged to share their feedback with each other. This, in turn, lays the ground for some very effective and really dynamic work atmosphere. Collaboration only always happens where there is open, unfiltered communication between employees, a collaborative effort by workers leads to high levels of creativity, faster completion time, less amount of overlooked omissions. Communication and collaboration are also beneficial in characterizing priorities. There have always been internal walls that shut off employees into departmental groups. Those walls can be broken down using the dynamism of DevOps. It is based on an atmosphere of mutual communication and collaboration between people working together towards the same goal. Other benefits that have more to do with human resources include

         – Employees that are happier and therefore more productive

         – Elevated levels of employee concentration, due to more relaxation time and rest periods

        – Professional improvement opportunities are more likely to be utilized.

• Backing Up Vital Data Automatically: DevOps assures the complete integrity, through automated action, backs up all valuable information.
• Innovation: an innovative mindset is the DevOps approach to significant clarification of the code infrastructure. Codes are the anatomy of the product. Sometimes, in spite of the fact that the humans who develop these codes are capable developers, programmers of high esteem, there are still some errors that are overlooked. DevOps cleans the code by a process known as the unification of the code, this leads to transparency, and this is an additional advantage when employing ing new people to the team.

Conclusion

DevOps is an amalgamation of Development and Operations. It incorporates quality assurance also since one of its benefits include continuous monitoring. If implemented in a business, DevOps adds rapid delivery, speed, scale, reliability, communication, collaboration, and security.

The year 2020 is a cautionary tale to the businesses and companies that refuse to evolve and imbue dexterity as a core of their existence. DevOps is here to stay, the advantages it possesses will ultimately give your business the wings it needs to soar above unexpected futures.

DevOps moves at an elevated tempo, in innovative product or service delivery, it will make your business agile enough to ride the waves of an ever-changing market. Its dependability and security would put your mind at rest, wouldn’t you invest in your business now?

Interested in Learning More About DevOps? ISHIR can help your organization implement the best DevOps practices.