DEVOPSdigest

In DEVOPSdigest's first annual list of DevOps Predictions, experts — analysts and consultants, and the top vendors — offer thoughtful, insightful, often controversial and sometimes contradictory predictions on how DevOps and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2016. Part 2 covers the changing roles of Ops and Dev teams.

Start with 2016 DevOps Predictions - Part 1

OPS TAKES ON NEW RESPONSIBILITIES

In 2016, we'll see significant evolution of "Ops" responsibilities within existing DevOps workflows. To this point, many organizations have spent far more time redefining the role of "Dev", advancing software engineers' influence across development and testing, into production, and even into end user support. The result has been increasing developer burnout and questions regarding operations teams' changing identities. In response, we'll see greater emphasis on collaboration arcing from Ops back into the Dev world, such as through deeper monitoring of APIs and microservices to inform the development process. This year we'll see greater equality across the larger DevOps practitioner landscape.
Aruna Ravichandran
VP, DevOps Product and Solutions Marketing, CA Technologies(link is external)

Maturity Metrics - Charting Your DevOps Progress

Webinar Series: Discover ROI of CA Continuous Delivery Solutions(link is external)

NO OPS GAINS GROUND

NoOps will gain ground in 2016. This means developers will have greater ability to deploy code without involving operations, as the level of automation, and platform services in general, will continue to grow. For ops personnel, we will see that they will be fewer in number, but more strategic to their organizations, as they take on enhanced roles that involve a broader responsibility for the buildout of the architecture that they manage.
Maurico Roman
Data Scientist, Loggly(link is external)

THE NOC IS DEAD

The traditional NOC is dead. To remain competitive, modern organizations must eliminate the cultural and organizational gaps that divide operations from development. NOC teams can't be expected to support apps if development teams aren't committed to building quality into the development process via continuous integration and test automation. Customers expect new features continuously. Management expects quality. The only way for IT to satisfy both demands is to commit to a culture that values joint app ownership, mutual respect, and accountability.
Dan Turchin
VP of Product, Big Panda(link is external)

DATABASE ADMINS BECOME PART OF DEVOPS TEAM

When the silos of Development and Operations collapsed to form DevOps, cloud adoption had just started taking hold. We predict that with the recent displacement of on-prem storage by cloud providers gaining speed, along with the associated overhead maintenance of those systems being offloaded, tertiary silos such as database administration and IT collapsing into the DevOps ecosystem will become more prevalent.
Chris Smith
COO, Idera(link is external)

DEVELOPER ENABLEMENT - THE NEW BUZZWORD

DevOps in 2016 will be about automating application delivery and providing transparency for the full process. Developer enablement will become a buzzword.
Kevin Fishner
Head of Customer Success, HashiCorp(link is external)

THE DEVOPS SKILLS GAP

2016 will be the year of the DevOps skills gap. The concept of "performance management as a service" will begin to emerge, with a migration from a workforce focused on traditional manual processes to a workforce focused on continuous integration, automation, cloud computing, and data science. And, as DevOps teams grow, demand for self-service capabilities around automated testing and monitoring will expand, but companies could find themselves without the needed skills to fulfill that demand…and with limited sources for hiring those skills as well.
Tom Lounibos
CEO & Founder, SOASTA(link is external)

Read 2016 DevOps Predictions - Part 3, covering the relationships between Dev, Ops and the Business.