DevOps as a Service

If a company wants immediate access to top-notch DevOps skills, it can try to hire them internally or outsource the project to a dedicated team.

For the following reason, the latter is better.

DevOps generally refers to the integration of CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery) pipelines into all phases of the software delivery process to ensure that the application or product is always ready for use and that improvements are constant, incremental and traceable.

How can this operating state be achieved?

First, you combine the development and operations departments to break down the segmented approach to tasks and responsibilities. This ends the practice of "throwing code over the fence" and leaving the next steps to someone else. When your developers and operations work closely together and share the same KPIs for project success, communication and collaboration will inevitably increase.

The goal of this knowledge exchange is to enable the Ops engineer to fix some minor errors on the staging server and push the code into production, instead of having to return it to the developers and quality assurance, thus repeating the entire process. 

Over time, recurring errors are analyzed and either converted into scripts that run automatically, or the code, infrastructure, or workflows are improved to sustainably eliminate these bottlenecks. This paves the way for automation, enabling developers to independently deploy new code to build, test, and staging environments without creating the tasks for Operations. Conversely, Operations can generate the deployment manifest for the developers, populating it with the necessary artifacts—allowing developers to create the required environments with a single command.

The DevOps team unites efforts to implement continuous integration (CI) / continuous delivery (CD) pipelines to ensure uninterrupted application and product availability and incremental process improvement. It's important to understand that the desired end state is the sum of many small successes. When routine tasks are automated, the team is a fully capable unit of inspired professionals pursuing the same goals, and the CI/CD processes are in place, then you can speak of a successful digital transformation and DevOps implementation in your organization.

This approach, however, requires time and effort. Therefore, many companies choose to outsource this aspect of IT operations to a trusted partner who has already completed the transition to DevOps and is now ready to offer DevOps-as-a-Service. This allows them to leverage their expertise to deliver tailored cloud solutions, ensure a smooth cloud transition, monitor IT infrastructure, provide intelligent alerts, and more. As a result, customers can skip the lengthy process of training a team and immediately reap the benefits of a DevOps culture.

Source: https://www.cloud-mag.com

Advantages of DevOps-as-a-Service

For this reason, ordering DevOps-as-a-Service is a good choice:

• You gain immediate access to experienced DevOps engineers who can contribute their expertise to your project from day one.
• Your DevOps partner works on a variety of projects for multiple companies across different industries. This gives their teams invaluable R&D experience, allowing them to immediately identify which approaches and solutions work and which don't. This helps save time and money while preventing costly mistakes in your project.
• A dedicated DevOps team provides the developer documentation and supports your internal IT department in mastering your new DevOps tools and systems. Again, the key is to learn from the mistakes of others instead of making your own.

Disadvantages of DevOps-as-a-Service

However, this approach is not a panacea for several reasons:

• Managing your IT infrastructure is one of the most resource-intensive areas of your business. Therefore, you need to engage a reliable partner to ensure the uninterrupted availability of your products/services.
• To avoid reducing safety due to outsourcing, a thorough review is essential to ensure operational safety.
• Your internal IT department should possess a certain level of skill and understanding regarding the integration between various software modules, cloud systems, and custom DevOps solutions provided by your DevOps partner. Otherwise, the IT department will not be able to support the system in production.
• Therefore, some additional training will definitely be required. The only solution is a long-term partnership with a DevOps service provider, so that they can handle all aspects of your IT operations for you.

Concluding remarks on the transition to DevOps-as-a-Service

In summary, outsourcing DevOps operations to an IT partner allows the company to focus on core competencies and growth, thereby delivering added value to its customers. You don't have to worry about product development, maintenance, monitoring, or backups – it will simply work.

We would be happy to show you the possibilities in the DevOps field in a free initial consultation. Simply contact us.