Post-pandemic DevOps and the future of work
Post-pandemic DevOps and how it aligns with the future of work are becoming increasingly apparent as DevOps teams and product delivery organizations continue to pivot to adjust to the pandemic and the new normal of work in whichever way their organization defines it.
Here are some of my recent thoughts about post-pandemic DevOps:
DevOps and DevSecOps: A future platform play?
One thing I’ve been watching with interest since I left TechTarget is the rise of DevOps platforms. I don’t think the days of rolling your DevOps toolchains will go away soon. Yet, the pandemic paints a compelling picture of why new 100% cloud toolchains could skip the traditional model we all know. Consider:
● Cloud-based tools are now the order of the day.
● A platform provider should have the cybersecurity expertise in-house to secure toolchains from man-in-the-middle attacks and other security risks that have gained renewed attention considering the SolarWinds and CodeCov software supply chain breaches
● Standardization can help onboard new developers quicker and with less reliance on mentoring and coaching as a toolchain that your organization built itself
I’m expecting a roll-up of smaller DevOps/DevSecOps tools vendors on the horizon once corporations gain renewed footing and their post-pandemic strategies fall into place. There’ve been some sizable funding rounds of container security firms already during the pandemic that can fuel such acquisitions.
While I make this bold prediction, I don’t expect the open-source to go by the wayside either. The future of DevOps and, by extension, DevSecOps will be full of exciting mergers & acquisitions and perhaps some unforeseen alliances between open source projects, independent software vendors (ISVs), and some large global professional services firms.
Hybrid work and the shifting security landscape
The rise of hybrid work brings additional security risks that hang over DevOps teams and the enterprises they serve. If they aren't there already, hybrid work will push more DevOps teams to the cloud for their toolchains.
Multicloud is sure to become another factor that DevOps teams must face. With multi-cloud comes containers. A growing reliance on containers is going to drive significant and even some mid-sized enterprises to establish centralized container repositories to support their development efforts
The changing nature of DevOps is also going to prompt some shifts in endpoint security as enterprises face the challenges of remote developers trying to push code from points well outside the traditional enterprise
Peak Ops leads to a rethinking of DevOps
Has the IT industry reached peak ops yet? This question went through my mind even before COVID. As organizations enter a new era of hybrid work, an Ops roll-up must be on the horizon. The first logical roll-up is DevOps and DevSecOps. NoOps, GitOps, and SecDevOps are lurking out there between development and operations teams.
A net result and lesson learned from months of remote work should be the value of automating and operationalizing as many development, operations, and security tasks as you can across the delivery lifecycle.
DevOps + future of work
DevOps is becoming a mile marker in the future of work in the post-pandemic world we’re now entering. DevOps teams who’ve already applied lessons about collaboration, automation, and breaking down silos during the pandemic have a new set of tools to greet the hybrid work world. It’s up to organizations to ensure these teams get the space to make it happen and improve their delivery practices.
Will Kelly is a writer and keen observer of the IT industry. Medium is his personal publishing platform. He has worked as a technical writer, marketing manager, product marketer, and freelance technology writer. Will has written about the cloud, DevOps, and enterprise mobility, most recently for TechTarget. Follow him on Twitter: @willkelly.
