DevOps: Where IT and Development Meet

Software development is playing an ever increasing role in business IT, and that means, in many cases, that IT operations need to be set up to service and attend to the needs of developers. DevOps, the emerging set of principles and guidelines for IT and software development, has helped close this gap for many companies.

But the market is moving at a faster pace than DevOps is, writes Cutter Consortium analyst Bill Keyworth. In a post exploring why IT operations don’t speak up more in DevOps discussions, Keyworth notes the overall state of the DevOps effort.

Devops is a maturing discipline and is obviously offering an increasingly visible value proposition for the enterprise. This growing devops “maturity” is driving more effective partnerships and better integration opportunities. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the devops partnerships and integrations are not coming fast enough to appease the significant IT market demand. One proof point is the rapid escalation in demand for SaaS application deployment, which is a symptom of the ongoing struggle between development and operations groups in satisfying end users’ business demands.

Competitive options now exist (and are expanding) for businesses to choose alternatives to IT-delivered and -supported applications, which further fuels the customer’s questioning of IT’s contribution to achieving corporate business objectives.

In what areas do you see a need for improvement within your own organization? Has DevOps helped align software/application development with IT operations in your company?

Read more about DevOps and business IT in Keyworth’s post on the Cutter blog.