What are the most relevant DevOps Trends, and how can they impact my organization?
As Dr. Nicole Forsgren, partner at Microsoft Research, says: “Developing and delivering technology well led to organizational outcomes (…) we needed to be doing DevOps. It needs tech, culture, and process.”
Nowadays, it is not about following stipulated rules and instructions. It is about bringing the focus on how technology can help scale a business with great added value. Innovate and transform the way we are used to working.
This reflects on the DevOps trends emerging in the tech world. Companies now recognize this mindset as a key element in any successful software development process. And work towards implementing the tools needed to optimize tasks and make organizational changes.
Let’s explore the top DevOps trends, their huge impact on teams, the company’s structure, and how they can help the organization slide into a bright future.
Table of Contents
- How has DevOps changed in the past years?
- DevOps Trends
- Future of DevOps
- Conclusion
How has DevOps changed in the past years?
In the past years, DevOps has grown in popularity and reach, as many companies are now adopting its practices. DevOps has also evolved thanks to the evolution of cloud computing and other technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. These, along with a more relevant focus on security and automation, have had a huge impact on how the mindset has changed over time.
First, let’s go back to the early appearances of DevOps. Through communication and collaboration strategies, this mindset made efforts to unify the operations department into the agile and automation methods that the development teams were already implementing. This resulted in an even more effective and continuous release of software.
How has DevOps evolved since then? The methodology is now well-received by more and more organizations from different industries. This means professionals are recognizing the value that it has to offer at an organizational and cultural level.
Overall, this is accomplished thanks to adopting different DevOps industry trends and tools:
Cloud Computing has simplified the DevOps strategy implementation process, improving software development with scalability and automation.
Kubernetes enables app portability and flexibility.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning prioritize automation and optimization for DevOps practices.
DevSecOps promotes shift-left security and its integration into every step of the development process.
As you can see, with the help of technology, DevOps has become a strong methodology that can be beneficial for every organization when applied correctly.
We’ll talk more about what are these DevOps industry trends about.
DevOps Trends
Now, let’s get into the DevOps Trends that make this set of practices easily adopted across all industries.
1. Cloud Computing
An essential component of DevOps practices.
Cloud computing enables organizations to be more agile and efficient. And it is one of the main reasons for the evolution of DevOps through the years.
Following the Cloud Native approach, huge and successful applications can be created with tools that fully work on the cloud. Enjoying the benefits of different cloud services that streamline every stage of the software development process.
Cloud Native takes full advantage of the benefits of cloud computing. By promoting the design of scalable and agile applications that focus on automation to be more prepared for the challenges that modern software development presents.
Overall, as DevOps trends continue to grow, cloud computing helps teams follow the methodology’s principle of delivering software in a faster and more efficient way.
Explore the benefits of AWS as a cloud computing provider.
2. DevSecOps
DevOps support the premise of shifting left (to the start of the pipeline) activities that are usually performed later in the development process.
A perfect example of this is security integrated at the very start, ideally for identifying any possible threat and preventing it before continuing with the process or even deploying without solving any security issue.
DevSecOps is integrated to enhance and strengthen the efforts regarding security. It ensures testing and other security practices like quality and performance evaluations are performed earlier and more frequently in the Software Development Life Cycle.
Thanks to DevSecOps trends, organizations are implementing testing tools to reinforce this shift-left approach. Like Static Application Security Testing (SAST), Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST), dependency scans, compliance scans, and container scans.
It is not a fight of DevSecOps against DevOps.
DevSecOps is, in fact, part of it and exists to support it through integrated automation.
As one of the fundaments of DevOps, automation in security is necessary to streamline security checks from the first stages of the SDLC. It helps to reduce manual tasks and ensure a faster, more precise security strategy.
Overall, DevSecOps trends are perfecting the process by increasing and ensuring security. That’s why it is one of the fundamental trends in DevOps.
DevOps vs DevSecOps, what is the difference? Read the full blog here.
3. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
These DevOps trends reached a high point in 2022 as more AI/ML tools arose and more companies started adopting them.
AI tools can increase the automation and performance of day-to-day tasks but also impact big and complicated activities that usually take on many resources from software development teams.
They align with DevOps culture and values as they promote continuous improvement, predictive analysis, and self-healing systems. This means that teams can ensure the quality of the products they are delivering with less manual effort and with a faster, safer release.
With new and impressive technologies like ChatGPT, it is safe to say that these DevOps trends will continue to grow in 2023 and into the future.
4. Container Orchestration
The trends in DevOps are not complete without mentioning how Container Orchestration automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Its benefits support the main values of DevOps, like ensuring a minimum deployment downtime and achieving automation and consistency.
A popular open-source container orchestration platform is Kubernetes. And it facilitates the portability of the application and the scalability of resources.
Kubernetes with GitOps is another DevOps trend that is worth looking into. GitOps combines the version control system Git with Kubernetes to manage clusters and rapidly build, test, and deploy software.
5. Serverless Computing
When teams don’t have to focus on managing servers, they can spend more resources and energy on building great applications. This is why serverless computing is one of the most relevant DevOps trends and will continue to be in the future.
In general, it offers great flexibility to adapt capacity based on workload. Which is why it is one of DevOps best practices.
Serverless Computing supports DevOps, allowing teams to only spend the resources they need for their projects. Also, scaling up and down according to the market demands and cutting down expenses by removing the need to maintain servers.
Everything you need to know about Serverless Databases: read the blog.
6. Microservices
Breaking down applications into more manageable pieces is the reason why giant applications like Netflix and Spotify implement Microservices.
Microservices allow DevOps to deliver software more frequently. Innovating and having more control over aspects like deploying small features without altering the entire code.
The comparison of Microservices vs Monolith makes it very clear that there are important factors to consider when implementing this DevOps trend. Like the team’s expertise, business risks, and the infrastructure you are working with.
But overall, it is beneficial for complex and evolving applications because it provides them with flexibility, scalability, and optimized costs.
Other trends and practices that are relevant to mention, as they relate to DevOps, include:
Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)
It consists of applying software engineering practices to solve infrastructure problems and general issues that can arise when there is a gap between development and operations.
As you can see, SRE and DevOps industry trends can be complementary to reach the final goal of creating software faster and in a more reliable way.
DevOps enables integration and collaboration, and SRE promotes reliability, resilience, and observability. SRE can be integrated into the DevOps workflow to provide organizations with agility and efficiency in their processes.
Platform Engineering
As part of the trends in DevOps, it is worth mentioning Platform Engineering. As it is an active component in building and maintaining the infrastructure that supports the DevOps workflow.
It eases the process of building and operating Cloud Native applications. And DevOps teams can rely on it to accelerate the process of developing and delivering the app.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
Overall, it makes it easier to manage infrastructure and maintain it at the desired state thanks to automation and through configuration files.
With Infrastructure as Code tools, infrastructure can be automated, tested, and deployed. So as one of the most used DevOps industry trends, it allows operations teams to focus on other tasks without worrying about administrating, provisioning, and managing responsibilities.
One of the most used Infrastructure as Code tools is Terraform, offered by HashiCorp. It creates and manages resources on cloud platforms and other services through its application programming interfaces (APIs). Following Terraform best practices, you can use a consistent workflow to provision and manage all of your infrastructure throughout its lifecycle.
Future of DevOps
What will the future of DevOps look like? We have talked about how this methodology has changed during the past years, and the highlight of all that transformation lies within the technologies used to implement and improve DevOps.
With that support, DevOps has grown to such a level that the positive change is now visible in the industries that are adopting it
Mention some relevant cases; the Healthcare Industry is a great example as it involves delicate information. Software related to healthcare must adopt DevOps practices to optimize resources and facilitate the management of a large amount of data.
But most importantly, take advantage of the organizational and cultural transformation that DevOps can offer to ensure the company can protect its patients and comply with security regulations.
Other impacted industries include Banking and Finance, Manufacturing, Insurance, and Retail. DevOps streamlines processes, improves communication systems and ensures better team collaboration.
As more and more organizations adopt the DevOps latest trends, it is a clear indication that we will see the aforementioned technologies for many years to come. Tools and trends like Kubernetes, Cloud Computing, and DevSecOps will evolve so DevOps can continue to impact organizations.
The future of DevOps looks bright and promising; read the full blog to learn more about the trends that will be part of it.
Conclusion
The trends in DevOps are fundamentally related to the success of this methodology. Engineers can perform their activities with better resources and offer better results in the organization when they follow the right trends, tools, and technologies according to the project they’re working on.
Cloud Computing is one of the reasons that made DevOps evolve through the years. And nowadays, more important and huge applications are built on the cloud to make them more agile, scalable, and reliable.
Security continues to be a priority in software development, so DevSecOps works toward implementing shift-left security. Kubernetes, Serverless Computing, and Microservices are popular DevOps trends when it comes to building better applications. So, we will see them in the future of DevOps as well, where more and more organizations will easily adopt this mindset.
And a frequent concern we might encounter when talking about DevOps trends is will these tools affect tech jobs or put more workload on developers? Well, the experts say that technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Platform Engineering are here to improve their jobs and increase productivity.
They are not here to replace engineers. So, when used correctly and by ensuring it follows each organization’s necessities when it is integrated, DevOps trends will add more value to DevOps practices.
Get into the DevOps Trends with the original blog on ClickIT: https://www.clickittech.com/devops/devops-trends/?utm_source=devto&utm_medium=referral
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