DEVOPSdigest

Several practices of webscale companies are now penetrating mainstream enterprise organizations. The practice of DevOps is perhaps one of the most important. Driven by the adoption of cloud and modernization of application architectures, DevOps practices are fast gaining ground in companies that are interested in moving fast – with software eating everything - between "write code and throw it across the wall" to creating more pragmatic mechanisms that induce and maintain operational rigor. The intent behind DevOps (and DevSecOps) is quite noble and excellent in theory.

Where it breaks down is in practice. Greenfield deployments remain innocent. Starting out with a clean slate is always relatively easy. Preserving or integrating legacy in brownfield environments is where it becomes both challenging and interesting. For the next several years that’s where the action is.

Enterprises that have invested in technology over the past few decades suddenly find that they can now actually create tremendous legacy inertia to move forward. So, while many have adopted DevOps practices, it has begun in pockets across the organization.

Over the last two years Quali has conducted an annual survey that captures the trends at a high level from different vantage points. A survey fielded among 2,000 IT industry executives both online and during events such as VMWorld, Delivery of Things, Cisco Live, DevOps Summit, AWS re:Invent and Jenkins World provided several insights. Many of these were consistent with our experience. Other insights continue to surprise us.

It is remarkable that many enterprises continue to be dependent on infrastructure to make applications move faster. Infrastructure continues to be a bottleneck, particularly in on-premise environments. Software defined architectures and NFV have taken root, but the solutions are still scratching the surface. Adoption of automation, blueprinting and environments-as-a-service are happening and greasing the skids, but clearly these need to happen at a faster pace.

The survey also demonstrated some clear patterns on the top barriers inhibiting the rapid adoption of DevOps practices. The rankings were published in the infographic below.

Organizations that are planning to accelerate their DevOps initiatives in 2017 should heed these barriers and set up a clear plan to overcome them.

Check out more results from the survey.

Shashi Kiran is CMO of Quali.