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The concept of DevOps was first introduced in 2009, by a group of Agile champions in Belgium. Patrick Debois, who’s often called “the father of DevOps”, coined the term “DevOps” at the time.

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How Did the DevOps Phenomenon Originate?

If you’ve got a background in software development, you’d definitely have heard about the DevOps phenomenon. And if your work has never involved technology, you’ve probably been wondering what this word means – every time you see or hear it!

The concept of DevOps was first introduced in 2009, by a group of Agile champions in Belgium. Patrick Debois, who’s often called “the father of DevOps”, coined the term “DevOps” at the time.

The methodology was conceived of as an amalgam of various tools, including Operations Management, Agile, Lean, Theory of constraints, and IT service management, when thinkers  came together over conferences, talks, and debates on Twitter, eventually leading to the philosophy behind DevOps.The term emerged from the convergence of two major trends –

Agile operations or Agile systems administration, which developed from the application of Lean and Agile approaches to operations work.
2. An expanded understanding of the value of collaboration between operations and development staff. This is required at every stage of the development lifecycle while creating and operating services. This also shed light on the importance of operations in this service-oriented world.

What is DevOps?

Borne of the need to improve IT Service Agility, the DevOps movement lays great emphasis upon collaboration, communication, and integration among IT operations and software developers. Instead of looking at the two groups as silos passing things across but not working together, DevOps sees them as inter-dependent units to help the organization provide IT and software services rapidly. 

DevOps, as defined in Wikipedia, is “the culture, movement, or practice that emphasizes the collaboration and communication of both software developers and other information technology professionals while automating the process of software delivery and infrastructure changes”.

DevOps, as defined in Wikipedia, is “the culture, movement, or practice that emphasizes the collaboration and communication of both software developers and other information technology professionals while automating the process of software delivery and infrastructure changes”.

Why Organizations Need Devops

The benefits of DevOps outweigh the potential difficulties. Aligning the two transparency-limited siloes ensures that systems are delivered faster, and also reduces risks in production changes through nonfunctional and automated testing, as well as shorter developmental iterations.

The DevOps approach automates the service management for the support of operational objectives, and improves understanding of the layers in the production environment stack. In turn, this helps prevent and resolve production issues.

Organizations may also realize that the differences are easier to overcome. To make a DevOps approach successful, you need careful business management and a cultural change to go with the right skills.

In short, companies incorporating DevOps practices are simply getting more things done! Code is deployed close to 30 times more frequently than that of competitors. According to a survey conducted by Puppet Labs 2013 State of DevOps, less that 50% of these deployments fail.

The shift in attitude comes from the fact that there is a single team comprising cross-functional members including QAs, developers, DBAs, operations engineers, business analysts and the like. This collaboration offers immense benefits.

The Technical Benefits:
 

1. Problems are less complex and can be fixed a lot more easily
2. Software delivery becomes a continuous process
3. Problems are resolved more quickly

The Business Benefits:


1. Features are delivered more quickly
2. Operating environments become more stable
3. Additional time is available to add value (rather than fix/ maintain)


1. Problems are less complex and can be fixed a lot more easily
2. Software delivery becomes a continuous process
3. Problems are resolved more quickly

The Business Benefits:

Features are delivered more quickly
2. Operating environments become more stable
3. Additional time is available to add value (rather than fix/ maintain)


Other measurable benefits include:

1. A shorter development cycle: The DevOps approach promotes the culture of increased communication and collaboration between the operations and the development teams. This translates to shorter timeframes as they move from the engineering code onto the executable production code.
2. Increased release velocity: The shorter development cycle creates an increased frequency for the release code that turns into production. The usual timeframe is 3-6 months right from the requirements to the release. But with DevOps, it will be reduced to a daily or hourly release build cycle. This fosters a culture of continuous deployment and development and subsequently increases the value of IT to the business.  The increased release velocity thus becomes a competitive advantage. 

Improved defect detection: The DevOps approach is built on the Agile programming methodology and can be considered as extended Agile programming. It is prescribed to various principles of Agile like iterative development, collaboration, and modular programming, thus breaking the bigger codebases into smaller much manageable features, making it easier to detect defects in the code.
4. Reduced deployment failures and rollbacks: The benefits that are gained from faster deployment and development are usually invalidated by failed deployment. However, software developed with the DevOps approach takes into account the operational view point as well. When combined with the improved defect detection clause, it can significantly reduce the number of issues before or after deployment, resulting in fewer rollbacks.
5. Reduced time to recover, upon failureThough the likelihood of failure is minimized, failure is inevitable. When it does occur, recovery time is relatively reduced with the use of DevOps, as compared to the traditional IT environment. This occurs mainly due to the integration of teams.

Why Do a Devops Certification?

A certification in DevOps is a concept that is still new to the world. But it’s now time for DevOps certifications to ascend to the next level. More and more organizations planning cloud deployments are adopting DevOps philosophies and practices. In the pursuit of excellence, the best practices need to be codified and taught in a timely and honored manner that has been used by the IT industry for over 40 years.

The DevOps ideology represents a new way of thinking and decision-making. The practitioners of DevOps are among the highest paid IT professionals today, with a market demand that is rapidly growing due to increased implementation around the world.

A report by Gartner has stated that, by 2016, DevOps will evolve from a niche to a mainstream strategy employed by 25 percent of Global 2000 organizations. The report also states that 58% of the earnings of DevOps practitioners are employed in the entertainment and media sector, and 17% will be employed in the education sector.

The report also touches upon the geographical factor – 65% of the well-paid DevOps engineers are employed in California, 58% in New York, 41% in Texas, and 37% in Oregon. Having a large presence in the Silicon Valley in California gives the DevOps revolution a huge advantage.

 

 

 

 




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