DEVOPSdigest

The Holiday Season means it is time for DEVOPSdigest's annual list of DevOps predictions. Industry experts — from analysts and consultants to the top vendors — offer thoughtful, insightful, and often controversial predictions on how DevOps and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2023.

Throughout the year, DEVOPSdigest covers a variety of technologies and subjects, and this year's predictions list offers an equally broad scope of topics. In addition to DevOps in general, topics covered include development, microservices, containers and Kubernetes, automation, integration and testing.

Some of these predictions may come true in the next 12 months, while others may be just as valid but take several years to be realized. Still others may be wishful thinking or unbased fears. Several predictions even directly contradict each other. But taken collectively, this list of predictions offers a timely and fascinating snapshot of what the IT industry and the DevOps market are thinking about, planning, expecting and hoping for 2023.

The predictions will be posted in 8 parts over the next two weeks, with separate lists of predictions for Low Code/No Code and DevSecOps to follow after the holidays.

A forecast by the top minds in DevOps today, here are the predictions:

DEVOPS GETS MASSIVE REBOOT IN 2023

I think DevOps will get a massive re-boot with a renewed focus on the cloud-native and microservices as adoption increases. The current DevOps deployments are focused on Dev and less on the Ops, I think as XXOPs (AIOPs, CloudOps, etc.) expands then the operational aspect of DevOps will become more comprehensive and it will start to influence the organizational roles and responsibilities of the structure of an IT department.
Roy Illsley
Chief Analyst, Omdia(link is external)

Since DevOps is a culture more than a technology, it will snowball as the number of people conversant and comfortable with it grows. But organizations can't delay. Companies that adopt DevOps will become more innovative and successful — those that don't will struggle to maintain relevance.
Richard Whitehead
Evangelist in Chief, CTO, Moogsoft(link is external)

As organizations run leaner, DevOps won't be a "nice to have," it'll be a requirement. Highly effective teams will need to adopt and refine their DevOps practice in order to compete and deliver value. This includes not just reducing cycle time and improving developer experience, but bringing security, observability, and compliance into their DevOps loop and making them "day zero" concerns.
Austin Parker
Head of DevRel, LightStep(link is external)

DEVOPS DRIVES DIGITAL-FIRST

In 2023 and beyond, it is expected that DevOps will play a key role in helping organizations continue to become digital-first businesses, which supports transformation through actionable insights, business agility, and customer centricity. Because of this, it is essential to consider change management and incident management when evaluating the cultural changes necessary in any DevOps undertaking. DevOps principles are centered around improving the coordination and communication between development and operations. If the end goal is faster and higher-quality software deliveries, the internal and external customer experience must be considered, and the service desk manages that function. The integration of incident and change management with leading agile development solutions will require a cultural shift. However, by streamlining work methods, teams boost service quality, reduce downtime, and resolve issues more quickly — all enabling innovation.
Margaret Lee
SVP and GM of Digital Service and Operations Management, BMC Software(link is external)

DEVOPS PRIORITY: MOBILE AND ACCESSIBILITY

In the coming year, mobile will be increasingly top of mind for DevOps teams and will become a part of standard application rather than an afterthought. With this, we'll also see a stronger emphasis on accessibility both for development teams and end users.
Mav Turner
SVP Product, Tricentis(link is external)

GREEN DEVOPS

Engineering and IT will come under increasing pressure to demonstrate their contribution to sustainability as organizations establish sustainability goals especially with data centers generating lots of carbon emissions. DevOps guided by ML will play a key part of any sustainability initiative as DevOps gains visibility in the usage of resources across the software development lifecycle.
Wing To
VP of Engineering for Value Stream Delivery Platform & DevOps, Digital.ai(link is external)

DEVOPS DOES MORE WITH LESS

With economic conditions and skill shortages being what they currently are, 2023 will be a year where every DevOps team will be forced to think about doing more with less. And one way to help accomplish that is through a major reduction in change/release timelines through AI-based automation used in service operations that helps to reduce associated risks.
Bruce Randall
Head of ITSM/AIOps Product Marketing, ServiceNow(link is external)

The absolute frenzy of software-based innovation in the past 10 years has left a rather large pool of technical debt behind us … and the economic headwinds will ask us to do more with less as scarcity is the new norm. A significant portion of the year ahead will have DevOps teams looking to pay off debt in an effort to maintain innovation capacity.
Shawn Ahmed
CMO and Interim Product Officer, CloudBees(link is external)

The incoming recession will force companies to pivot to DevOps and automation. Based on what we saw at KubeCon and VMware Explore this year, we are seeing the evolution of the sysadmin. This means keeping a greater eye on Kubernetes, cloud platforms, and virtualization as well as surrounding technologies such as Linux, CI/CD, infrastructure as code and configuration management. With the economic downturn, industry leaders will have to think about shift-left, automation and DevOps, policy-based management, etc. Rather than saying it is impossible, experts will now have to do a lot more with a lot less, which will require much more automation.
Michael Cade
Sr. Global Technologist, Kasten by Veeam(link is external)

2022 has left many engineering organizations smaller than before, and unfortunately, it's likely that trend will continue in 2023. When capital is abundant, there's a natural tendency to address new challenges/requirements with more headcount. We expect a renewed focus on improving productivity while hiring remains frozen. High-performing teams will be pragmatic about identifying core competencies and outsourcing everything else. Identifying well-intended, but ultimately misguided internal projects whose maintenance and enhancement require ongoing time investment and replacing them with best-of-breed external solutions will be key to recovering developer time.
Joseph Ruscio
General Partner, Heavybit(link is external)

Start with: 2023 DevOps Predictions - Part 2, covering BizDevOps and more on DevOps.