DevOps in an 21st Century Enterprise IT Estate

       DevOps is ‘Development’ and  ‘Operations’, is defined by  popular media as a culture, movement or practice that emphasizes the collaboration and communication of both software developers and other information-technology (IT) professionals while automating the process of software delivery and infrastructure changes. It aims at establishing a culture and environment where building, testing, and releasing software, can happen rapidly, frequently, and more reliably.

       Speed to innovate and adapt change is a critical to success of any IT estate. Traditional enterprises IT estate that started as lean IT transformation and gathered flab along way. And with the changing economic landscape, it becomes more important to have IT that is an enabler of digital transformation, continue to support this transformation and be future ready. Reducing the innovation cycle, and reduced release time to market a product and services in a regular basis brings in the competitive edge. Integration of application development and operations for continuous delivery is DevOps

      DevOps is a methodology where program management, development, and operations work together throughout the life-cycle to rapidly and continuously deliver quality and improved solutions to respond to constantly changing business needs. It enables IT Managers to take faster decisions and gives a framework of innovation. It brings in efficiency to the ITIL framework by taking support of its tool chain across technology stack. These tools chain are clubbed under four high-level IT Application Life-cycle process areas of Ideate to Launch, Requirement to Deploy, Run to Optimize, and Detect to Correct.

            DevOps brings collaboration between Development (Build) and Operations (Run) comprising a chain of Methodology, Tools and Standards across the full development life-cycle. Development refers to discipline in Software Engineering starting from Development Methodology, Solution repository, Landscape Management, Design Templates, Test Management, and other various discipline.  Operations is widely used to address all layers from network, servers, security, applications administration, database administration, business process, and other various disciplines related to day to day operation.  Thus DevOps is a bundled study of multiple delivery tools, process standardization, development tools and standards that provides the integrated ‘system’ for Enterprise Application Managers to know what is happening and why. This approach is tied up with Build Factory and Run Factory. To summarize it is Development [Build] ways that will continue to be used in Operations [Run], and continue to be used in further builds.

          Traditionally development and operations teams worked in silo and had opposing priorities. They seldom communicated and did not have a common platform for agreement. Environment coordination was left to a small group who managed event planning, coordinated between teams, suppliers and other departments. The success of this coordination was left to individual’s skill. DevOps offers a platform that promotes joint ownership, common governance of the disciplines and guaranteed all teams to work as per their design with a common ground of reporting and tracking. Similarly, continuous delivery is about a lean structure that dramatically reduce the cost of incremental releases and allows the IT application for early releases, react to user feedback with fixes without waiting for a delayed release windows. IT application change approval boards traditionally differs changes to a big-bang release or release windows for bundled changes. This was done to manage the risk of change. Automation in deployment, testing, infrastructure provisioning is accelerating the time to productionize a change.

           The key is to selecting the right speed for each area of the IT estate, and then operating that at full-speed. Select the right tools.  But also select the right groups, and the right applications / projects.  Ensure early success. The need for multi-tier system of records applications are slow moving behemoths owing to a need for stability and limited change.  While the front-office digital collaboration (Commerce and Engagement) are dynamic with daily releases. This works in an integrated IT estate of multiple technical and process towers. This need a detailed diligence to illustrate the right functionality and tool chain to be added to derive efficiency. This allows you to introduce organizational changes, design & build methodologies, Build the frame work for DevOps and adapt the DevOps tool chain for continuous testing, continuous deployment etc. Omni-speed is a state of maturity were your DevOps is orchestrated in an environment where pluralistic demands of 21^st Century Enterprise Applications are respected and not a totalitarian state. It is a choice of best-fit versus best-breed.

In my next article, we will discuss more details around the DevOps Value Chain specifically for an SAP Estate.

About the author: Trijoy Saikia is an Enterprise Architect having 16+ years of experience in IT across chemical, natural resources vertical domain and working experience in mills and process industry. He has worked on complex SAP landscape in various capacities in outsourcing, system integration and transformation projects. He has experience working on large multi geography landscape transformation related to acquisition and spin-off, including managing integration, transition, rebadging and handling sensitivities. He has been in roles with accountability in Delivery, Financials, Customer Satisfaction for Service Management and Service Delivery across SAP and non-SAP applications. He is involved in roles across technology – design, integration, IT transformation, technology architecture, project management, mobilizations, and change management. He has contribution to pre-sales, solution architecting, service management, mobilization, transformation and delivery roles. He is involved in building capabilities in technology architecture. Have co-authored white papers, leads innovations and has built capabilities in SAP Architecture, Administration, Security, Integration and Shop-Floor Technologies. He is a Computer Engineer by education, and hails from Assam in India. He has worked with Accenture and Patni Computers Systems prior to joining HCLin 2014.He is is a Director in SAP Service line. He can be connected at trijoy.s@hcl.com