DevOps: How, What and When?

It is inevitable that DevOps will become an integral part of most of the IT and technology companies and of most of their clients sooner or later.

DevOps is a culture that needs to be ingrained in the DNA of the company. Its not a one time change but a change that will need to be adopted from the highest level of the CEO to the most basic workforce member. The McKinsey's 7s Framework emphasizes on alignment of Hard and Soft elements of a company for better performance or to bring about a change,and it is well known that its harder to change the "Soft" elements : Shared Values, Skills, Staff and Style. Implementation of DevOps will face a similar challenge which will be expensive in terms of time, efforts and resources too.

Most of the upcoming innovations will take 2-5 years to become a part of the mainstream, but if one can start building capabilities in the same direction, such companies can be fully prepared at the time its needed, while others would be lagging behind. The preparedness can be in terms of exhaustive knowledge about DevOps implementation, resources skilled to use technologies, tools and techniques facilitating DevOps and a database of challenges with their solutions.

To fasten the processes further,to highlight the emerging trends and to show how companies can be prepared for them in advance am explicating the Gartner Hype Cycle on DevOps published few months back here. Earlier DevOps was a part of the Emerging Innovation Hype Cycles, but now there's a dedicated Hype Cycle for the technologies that bring about the DevOps Culture.Take a look:

What is a Hype Cycle?

Gartner Hype Cycles provide a graphic representation of the maturity and adoption of technologies and applications, and how they are potentially relevant to solving real business problems and exploiting new opportunities.

What is there for the upcoming IT -tech companies?

This DevOps Hype Cycle shows that some of the technologies are being well adopted, some are yet to be and some are just not living up to the expectations.Some very important Key words to look at would be the following. A lot of work has started building up in the enlisted technologies. A large number of Open source tools are available and a large number of more sophisticated ones too, but there's still a lot of room in here. Be it software / platform development or testing firm - it is time to delve into the sea of DevOps!

·        Application Performance Monitoring Suites

·        Continuous Delivery

·        User and Entity Behaviour Analytics

·        Lean IT

·        Microservices (Distributed Tracing)

·        Mediated APIs (API Testing, Virtualization)

·        Test Data Management

·        Container Management (Docker)

How to read a Hype Cycle?

A Hype cycle consists of five stages. Each of which represents the level at which a technology has reached.

·        Innovation Trigger - Generating significant industry interest but not successful yet.

·        Peak of Inflated Expectations - During this phase, a flurry of well-publicizedactivity by technology leaders results in some successes, but more failures, as the technology is pushed to its limits.

·        Trough of Disillusionment - Because the technology does not live up to its overinflated expectations, it rapidly becomesunfashionable.

·        Slope of Enlightenment- Focused experimentation and solid hard work by an increasingly diverse range oforganizations lead to a true understanding of the technology's applicability, risks andbenefits.

·        Plateau of Productivity -The real-world benefits of the technology are demonstrated and accepted. Tools and methodologies are increasingly stable as they enter their second and third generations. Approximately 20% of the technology's target audience has adopted or is adopting the technology as it enters this phase.

Years to Mainstream Adoption - The time required for the technology to reach the Plateau of Productivity.