What drives the massive growth of the DevOps industry?
DevOps has been a huge buzzword in the tech industry for quite some time now. Its enormous
“fan base” is rapidly increasing since DevOps adoption provides quick and frequent releases,
quality software that meets project expectations and IT that empowers business growth.
But is this exponential blooming expected to slow down soon? Not at all. Indeed, since its first
application in 2009, DevOps has developed significantly, and now, in its second decade, it
keeps evolving.
Those statistics have us wondering what is yet to expect in the industry. DevOps has proven to
be a standard, rather than just a trend, and it is already a huge market out there. Despite its
impressive success, DevOps is still not completely formed. It will be intriguing to observe what
the future of DevOps has to offer and eventually surprise us with a groundbreaking approach to
software innovation.
How will DevOps practices evolve in 2023?
Currently, we observe already innovative and widely implemented trends that shape DevOps.
Namely, those are Automation, Migration from Monoliths to Microservices, Security, Serverless
Infrastructure, Increasing Cloud Adoption, and many more.
Working in a DevOps consulting company, I experience firsthand the good practices that
come in use. Moreover, I am always on the lookout for new DevOps trends and toolkits to better
challenge industry innovation. Let’s have a glimpse into what to expect from the future of
DevOps.
1. Infrastructure Automation is the way to go
Automation is always an advanced focus for any business and that trend isn’t expected to
change anytime soon. Automation streamlines the DevOps lifecycle by tangibly reducing
manual workload. Automation has grown into a fundamental enabler of DevOps solutions, and it
would be extremely tough to think of one without the other.
It enables businesses to be more agile with greater speed and inventiveness.
You may be wondering: which DevOps processes should be automated? I would say everything
you could automate. That really depends on the organizational needs and technical feasibility
really. Good examples are Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery CI/CD,
Infrastructure management, Software Testing, Monitoring, Log Management, and more.
2. Continuous Everything
I believe that the future of DevOps lies behind the “continuous everything” concept. What this basically means is that every component such as performance, security, compliance, cost, etc. is automatically and continuously applied without compromising the speed of the release process. The finest DevOps process is the one that is fully automated and fully coordinated with emerging corporate requirements.
Many businesses have yet to realize that DevOps is continuous, always optimal, and contextual.
Are you familiar with the six “C’s” of the DevOps cycle? Applying this cycle between the different
stages of the software lifecycle will help you better align your business perspective. Here they
are:
- Continuous Business Planning
- Collaborative Development
- Continual Testing
- Collaborative Customer Feedback & Optimization
- Continuous Release and Deployment
- Continuous & Ongoing Monitoring
3. Extended Adoption of Microservice Architecture
Microservice architecture is basically software composed of small independent services that are
flexible and scalable, the opposite of monolithic architecture. Monolithic architecture requires
deploying a new version for introducing even a small change into the cycle. It becomes quite
tough since you can’t just scale up specific features or functionalities, but scale the entire
application, the entire code base. The bigger the team and users, the more complex it gets. A
microservice, on the contrary, is built, tested, and deployed independently.
Even though the shift to microservices is already a fact, for many industries, it is still undergoing
or even still a consideration. Microservices enable more flexible cycles, more customization capabilities, and scaling options.
The microservices trend is also highly related to the Cloud-as we’ll talk about later in this article. The shift to microservices is a key step in empowering DevOps. This not-at-all-new trend acts as a catalyst for DevOps as it promotes the idea of operational efficiency, agility, and modularity.
4. Prioritizing Security: Emerging DevSecOps
Cloud-native security becomes a priority as organizations adopt Kubernetes, serverless, and
other cloud-native technologies. Security is already a high priority for the DevOps teams,
however, the new position, mainly focused on it, may prove beneficial in the long run. Migrating
to the cloud enables businesses to deliver new features at a higher velocity and frequency.
However, teams need to embrace new tools and processes to ensure that these deployments
are safe.
As many employees work from home these past years, and potentially many more will switch to
it in the future, businesses will rely on a secure software supply chain. Security can’t only be
present in the aftermath. Instead, we must embed security into every layer as secure code thus
any vulnerabilities are detected and addressed.
DevOps engineers will adapt and make sure that software is secure not only as it is written, but
as it is deployed, as well. To properly address security, teams need to:
- Fully comprehend what security really is. For example, the idea isn’t to remove and/or prevent all risks, it’s to mitigate as many of them as possible.
- Obtain proper cloud (and on-prem) vulnerability scanners available to scan any service in use.
- Secure the code (perhaps infrastructure-as-code) with standard tests (unit/integration/mock/etc) and/or Policy-as-Code.
Explore DevSecOps, an emerging practice that prioritizes security at each step of the software delivery lifecycle.
5. Continuous Cloud Adoption
Cloud technology, with its agility and scalability, has been a trend for quite some time now.
Moreover, with so many companies having their entire workforce working from home, cloud
adoption and the need for full digitalization is a fact. Migration to Cloud Management Platforms
(CMPs) increases as it makes infrastructures’ security and controls easy and manageable. All the
benefits come with a certain price tag (which we gradually learn how to manage), but the Cloud
trend will most definitely continue. Considering the move to SaaS and PaaS I think it’s safe to say that organizations are getting used to consuming services over the network instead of on-
prem installations.
How to Keep up with DevOps Trends?
DevOps is constantly emerging and it has become necessary to adapt. We observe its
continuous adoption within organizations worldwide to ensure high-quality software-based
products and services.
Reaping the future DevOps trends and their benefits is quite a task for every company but
having a good in-house DevOps team or trusted DevOps consulting partner ensures your IT
infrastructure is well-aligned with your business goals.