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 3 covers the relationships between Dev, Ops and the Business.

Start with 2016 DevOps Predictions - Part 1

Start with 2016 DevOps Predictions - Part 2

BIZDEVOPS BECOMES ESSENTIAL

In 2016, DevOps will no longer just be understood as collaboration or the bringing together of Development and Operations. Those enterprises who will be successful will understand that collaboration is essential between business teams (product management, marketing), IT development and operations. This will mean that you will start to read and hear more about BizDevOps within the enterprise. This will also mean that BizDevOps will become an essential for any digital business transformation initiative.
John Rakowski
Director of Technology Strategy, AppDynamics(link is external)

In 2016 DevOps teams will align around applications as the common contract between the business that needs them, the developers that build them, and the operations teams that run and maintain them. This maturation will be the result of an increased focus on managing things beyond traditional IT infrastructure, to increased alignment on business critical applications. The organizations whose internal teams are able to effectively collaborate and align towards this common goal will be the ones that stand out from the pack in 2016.
Tim Zonca
Director of Product Marketing, Puppet Labs(link is external)

EXPANDING DEVOPS BEYOND DEV AND OPS

The principles, processes and tools that are core to the existing DevOps movement will expand beyond traditional development and operations teams. Non-technical teams are often in silos too, so can also get value from the benefits DevOps provides to software teams, including a high-trust open culture, creating and validating hypotheses, measurement, shortened feedback loops and enhanced collaboration; all of these lead to high velocity organizations regardless of type. Approaches and tools like pull-requests and ChatOps are no longer just for technical teams anymore - any modern organization can reap benefits from DevOps approaches.
Stevan Arychuk
Senior Product Manager, New Relic(link is external)

Enterprises will increasingly realize that digital transformation and DevOps are two ways of looking at the same cultural shift – or perhaps they will recognize that these trends must connect to each other. Regardless of the perspective, my prediction is that DevOps will have much more added to dev and ops, as we're already seeing SecDevOps. In 2016, add digital/marketing/product/mobile to the mix as well.
Jason Bloomberg
President, Intellyx(link is external)

Gartner predicts 25% of the global 2000 will be using DevOps patterns in 2016. Not only do we think that percentage will be higher, but we predict DevOps will significantly broaden its applicability in the mainstream. Areas like compliance and security that have been traditionally left out will become inherent to the DevOps workflow. DevOps patterns will be applied well outside of just IT, which itself will continue to ascend to being the primary business engine in the digital economy.
Lucas A. Welch
Director of Communications, Chef(link is external)

APM BRIDGES GAP BETWEEN DEVELOPMENT AND OPERATIONS

Collaborative Application Performance Management will link operations and development teams together. Working on common timetables and cutting across silos and tiers, operations and development teams will streamline tools and processes to ensure that application deployment and operations deliver exactly what the business needs to be successful.
Arun Aravamudhan
Senior Product Architect, eG Innovations(link is external)

ALL ABOUT AGILE

If an organization wants to be successful, they will have to break the linear pattern of how Dev and Ops work together when building, testing and delivering applications. High-performing organizations utilize a more circular pattern of feedback loops that when aided by the right technology and tooling, cultivate a level of collaboration that enables organizations to produce more than just software – they can deliver a service. 2016 is going too be about the agile delivery of services and the operational control and developer productivity that result when an organization tears down the wall between Dev and Ops.
John Willis
Director of Ecosystem Development, Docker(link is external)

5 More DevOps Predictions for 2016 from Docker

BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN DEVELOPMENT AND NETWORK OPERATIONS

DevOps will finally become that bridge between content creation and content delivery. DevOps is still not well established or well understood in the networking and application networking community. I predict a strong push to bridge the gap between the DevOps application developers and the network infrastructure teams through technologies that enable DevOps operational models to become more standard and transparent. This will require application networking technologies to incorporate orchestrated agile and elastic environments as well as a richer understanding of application defined networking.
Frank Yue
Director of Application Delivery Solutions, Radware(link is external)

BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN DEVOPS AND MARKETING

We said this in 2015, but it bears repeating for 2016. While DevOps may have broken down walls between development and operations teams, the next step is to break down the barriers between DevOps and marketing. The days of large image files, embedded video, third-party tags for advertising, content and social media, and other performance killers dragging down web applications must end. Performance is the fifth P in the marketing mix, along with product, price, promotion and place. Poor performance kills customer experience, which in turn reduces revenue and customer retention. DevOps needs to make it clear this year that some marketing activities are hurting, not helping the business.
Mehdi Daoudi
CEO and Founder, Catchpoint(link is external)

Read 2016 DevOps Predictions - Part 4, covering analytics, SaaS, testing and more.