DevOps—which blends the words development and operations—is a key enabler for digital transformation. A cutting edge combination of people, process and technology to accelerate software development and simplify operations, DevOps enables companies to innovate faster, become more agile and produce better software.

The real power of DevOps is unleashed when it is combined with cloud-native development. The cloud supports DevOps teams with a scalable, centralised infrastructure for rapid testing, deployment, and production. Developers and operations can provision computing resources in minutes and shut them off when they’re not needed.

DevOps and cloud development both accelerate speed to market with new software releases, help organisations to reduce costs of development, deployment and testing, boost software quality, move towards continuous improvement, and enable developers to be more responsive to end-user needs. But combined, they take these benefits to the next level.

With the DevOps market expected to be worth $37 billion by 2030, DevOps practices are fundamental in every enterprise’s cloud migration and digital transformation strategy. Through trends such as increased adoption of serverless computing, a shift towards DevSecOps and heightened levels of automation, cloud and DevOps are becoming even more closely associated.

We recommend that companies follow a structured roadmap for cloud DevOps:

• Assess the maturity of your cloud strategy and DevOps practices: This includes an assessment of the current processes, technology, skills base and culture.
• Decide where you want to go: Evaluate where the business is going and determine how a cloud DevOps approach will enable it to reach its goals.
• Define DevOps processes and culture: Shift the mindset and pipeline from delivering software to delivering service, embrace agile methodologies, and adopt an approach of continuous development, deployment, testing, and iteration.
• Shape the cloud DevOps team: Reskill and recruit people to get the right mix of DevOps, cloud engineering, and software development skills. Change management is essential in helping developers who are new to DevOps, cloud, or both to embrace dramatic changes to their ways of working.
• Evaluate and choose tools: Evaluate the cloud platforms in place and existing development toolchains.
• Implement and continuously improve: Implement DevOps practices, processes, tools, and the cloud platforms, following an incremental path. Cloud DevOps is all about continuous improvements to speed, agility, and productivity.

Whether the business is deep in the cloud, but immature in DevOps processes, advanced in DevOps but lagging in cloud migration, or inexperienced in both, a shift towards cloud DevOps is a major undertaking. The rewards are significant for companies that get it right—not just faster software development, but better quality software and higher levels of enterprise agility.

1Nebula has been helping companies to streamline cloud development and implement FinOps and DevOps cultures since these practices were new to the market. Contact us to learn more about how we can partner with you in optimising the performance and costs of your IT environment as you accelerate digital transformation.