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The Road Ahead for Security, DevOps Transformation

Qualys hosted its Qualys Security Conference 19 this week in Las Vegas. Hundreds of attendees from around the world have gathered at the Bellagio hotel to learn more about the current state of cybersecurity and what the future has in store. As you might expect, given the technology landscape today, many of the sessions and discussions have revolved around DevOps and how cybersecurity can adapt to DevOps culture.

Scott Crawford, Research Vice President at 451 Research presents “The Road Ahead for Security, IT, and DevOps” at the Qualys Security Conference

The Shifting Technology Ecosystem

Scott Crawford, research vice president at 451 Research, opened day two of the Qualys Security Conference with his keynote, “The Road Ahead for Security, IT, and DevOps.” Crawford talked about the dramatic changes over the last decade or so—from monolithic to microservices, from standalone applications to integrated software, from Waterfall to Agile, enterprise networks to IoT / OT, from standard networks to 5G wireless, and from traditional IT to DevOps. He discussed the challenges organizations face and the dilemma of doubling down on past success and missing out on innovation.

With all of the changes from this shifting technology ecosystem, there are consequences. Organizations no longer have a single point of control and IT teams are faced with managing and protecting an increasingly complex web of interconnected platforms, applications and services.

Security and DevOps

Crawford also talked about the rise of zero trust. He described it as a sort of mashup of the concept of least privileged access, combined with behavioral analytics and an on-demand, just-in-time approach to managing access. The zero trust paradigm is based on the premise of never trust, always verify—and that means determining who is requesting access, under what conditions they’re requesting access and what actions they intend to perform with that access on a case0-by-case basis.

He shared the Xebia Labs Periodic Table of DevOps tools to illustrate the overwhelming number of options available and stressed the importance of automation. CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous deployment), RPA (robotic process automation), and SOAR (security orchestration, automation and response) solutions have been developed to help address and manage some of the complexity of both DevOps deployments and cybersecurity.

Xebia Labs Periodic Table of DevOps Tools

DevOps and Digital Transformation

Crawford’s keynote was followed by a presentation titled, “The DevOps Transformation of the Qualys Platform: Lessons Learned.” Dilip Bachwani, senior vice president of engineering and cloud operations for Qualys, talked about how the company has addressed the “innovator’s dilemma” and steps it has taken to deal with growing pains as it goes through its own digital transformation.

Bachwani explained that the engineering team at Qualys has expanded exponentially in a relatively short period. That comes with several benefits in terms of how quickly they can develop and implement new solutions, but the team also faced challenges with balancing that growth and trying to maintain velocity at the same time without sacrificing stability or reliability.

Just like every other organization going through a DevOps transformation, Qualys has had to break down silos with people, processes and tools. Bachwani explained that they needed to do things differently to automate as many functions as possible. They decided to view infrastructure and operations as software problems and find ways to fully automate deployment and configuration.

He also emphasized that security must be built in throughout the DevOps life cycle. Qualys adopted a hub-and-spoke DevOps model and developed a robust DevOps toolchain designed to combine and orchestrate an effective set of tools for developing, delivering and maintaining software. Having a standardized toolchain ensures that there is a common platform available to everyone.

Accelerating Transformation With Citizen Developers

At the end of Crawford’s keynote, he talked about the lack of people with the right knowledge and skills. Cyber Security Ventures predicts that there will be 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs by 2021. That’s just cybersecurity. What about developers and other key personnel? Crawford posed the question, “Where will we find the people to do it all?”

The answer, he said, is citizen developers. What is a citizen developer? It’s a movement to empower employees who are not developers by trade with the tools and support to implement ideas. They are the ones closest to the problem and, arguably, best equipped to understand how to solve it. They don’t need to be professional developers or need experience with coding environments. Low-code and no-code platforms give them the power to turn ideas into solutions.

A few years ago, George Hulme wrote an article on the growing citizen developer movement. Hulme noted, “The organizations that succeed with citizen development will be those that wholeheartedly embrace the movement and cultivate it, with IT’s help and guidance.”

The DevOps revolution isn’t going away. Companies that don’t embrace digital transformation will likely fade into oblivion as they are left in the dust by more innovative competitors, and organizations that don’t figure out how to integrate security into the fabric of their culture will struggle against a rapidly expanding and evolving threat landscape.

At this point, these things are like the ocean tide. It is coming whether you like it or not, and it will destroy those who are not prepared. Crawford wrapped up by asking the audience to consider what their role is going to be in building and maintaining the future of DevOps and cybersecurity.

— Tony Bradley

November 22, 2019
Citizen Developers Drive Productivity and Innovation

It was once written that “software is eating the world,” “APIs are eating the world” and “APIs are eating software.” In 2019, a more accurate statement might be, “APIs (or application programming interfaces) fuel the software that’s still eating the world.”

In today’s world, there is an ever-constant demand for software, enterprise applications and mobile applications, and most company IT departments can’t keep up. Enter the citizen developer. Citizen developers are helping organizations close the demand gap and innovate more quickly. But who are they and what role do they fill within an organization? And how do they contribute to overall technology innovation within a company?

Citizen Developers and the Need for Speed

The ongoing need to develop software quickly and efficiently has given rise to a new type of developer. A citizen developer is a non-professional developer who builds new business applications using existing tools, development and runtime environments sanctioned by corporate IT. They also can access various online tutorials to learn and master their application-building skills.

Today’s software development environment, powered by APIs, is ripe for the citizen developer. APIs, mobile application development kits and the cloud have created a no-code/low-code, building block-like approach to building software. Less code and a more simplistic software development path allow citizen developers to create much-needed apps quickly. This building-block approach cuts development time, translating to faster time-to-value.

Speed is critical not only in the creation of new apps, but also in the end user experience of these apps. With the building-block model, citizen developers use best-of-breed technologies for each block—making the resulting UX optimal (and fast) for an internal user or customer end user. Internal users are able to use fast, effective search within employee directories, company intranets and project management solutions, for example.

For end users, this need for speed addresses their ever-growing expectations. When someone searches for hotel deals in Phoenix, for example, they expect accurate, personalized and fast results. Even a one- or two-second delay can translate to lost opportunity and revenue.

The Workplace

In the digital workplace, citizen developers serve a key purpose. For starters, they know firsthand about the challenges employees face at work; they also know which applications or tools are critical to getting the job done. These non-IT developers (perhaps in a business or marketing role) help create apps for timesheet entry, productivity tracking, project workflow reporting and more. In one study, 76% of businesses stated that at least some of their apps were developed outside of their IT department—and 20% even stated that most of their applications were created outside of IT.

Citizen developers often use low-code tools or visual tools with some degree of coding required. Low-code allows developers to design and develop software applications with minimal hand-coding, while low-code platforms enable users to build applications with modern user interfaces, integrations and data quickly without writing thousands of lines of complex code. Also, citizen developers may work alongside software developers and database experts to develop apps with custom coding to meet specific enterprise or company needs.

Citizen Developers and IT: Working Together

When citizen developers work alongside IT, two things happen. First, by creating simple apps on their own, they enable IT to focus on developing more complex applications. Second, when building more complicated or customized applications, IT can use citizen developers to derive valuable insight. This data helps with testing or tweaking business app prototypes. With low-code, citizen developers with some technical skill start with a prototype and then can iterate with the IT team during the developer phase and later integration of systems, custom coding and security processes. Also, developers, who are often asked to understand more of the business side of the organization, gain this insight working with workplace citizen developers. And the results are promising: 82% of citizen developers said they witnessed a reduction in inefficient tasks while 71% reported an increase in team productivity.

In the past, IT spearheaded application development projects from beginning to end. Now, with citizen developers becoming an integral part of the workplace, IT’s role changes a bit. While no longer in full control, IT does give recommendations to the business department and selects development components and building blocks.

Just the Beginning

When it comes to search software, citizen developers have the potential to create personalized and customized experiences. While some types of front-end search are simple to create, developing a personalized and customized search experience is more complicated. This is where the current work lies and in doing so, we can build a new community of search-focused citizen developers.

This is only the beginning, as there will always be a demand for developers (both traditionally trained and citizen developers). In the coming years, we will see more citizen developers as there literally aren’t enough engineering schools to train students to meet business demand. They are helping to democratize application and software development across the board—and we can expect to see businesses and consumers continue to benefit.

— Julien Lemoine

May 29, 2019
OutSystems Infuses DevOps Processes into Low-Code Platform

OutSystems has turned its low-code platform into a framework for generating microservices that can run on-premises or in a variety of public clouds.

Mike Hughes, senior director of product marketing at OutSystems, said applications generated using OutSystems 11 now can be deployed on both platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environments and container-as-a-service (CaaS) environments, including Amazon Web Services public clouds and the Pivotal PaaS based on open source Cloud Foundry software and CaaS platforms such AWS ECS, Azure Container Service, or as a set of Docker containers running on-premises.

In addition, OutSystems 11 includes a set of monitoring tools capable of identifying issues emanating from within the applications and external dependencies, as well as a set of impact analysis tools that identify issues before an application is deployed. Those tools are critical elements of a concerted effort to apply DevOps practices and principles to the development of applications created using low-code tools, said Hughes.

OutSystems 11 also now includes an entitlement model for controlling who can create and manage services and who can consume them, using a full entitlement model that extends to all applications and services.

Finally, OutSystems has added support for automated risk assessments, granular access controls and activity monitoring of supplemental manual processes along with a revamped user interface.

IT organizations of all sizes are trying to cope with a growing application development backlog by embracing low-code tools that can be employed either by professional developers to accelerate development or so-called citizen developers to create applications on their own. Legacy approaches to application development have created a gridlock issue that organizations are not going to be able to break without embracing a more modern approach to application development that combines the best of low-code application development platforms and DevOps practices, said Hughes.

Hughes noted that more organizations than ever are trying to accelerate application development at a time when digital process transformation has become a much high priority. The rate at which new applications can be built, tested and deployed has a direct impact on an organization’s ability to compete, he said. The challenge organizations face is that much of the subject matter expertise required to build these applications resides in business units that have limited application development expertise. The central IT organization, conversely, typically has a limited number of developers available to work on applications at any one time. Rather than simply providing citizen developers with low-code tools, OutSystems is making a case for an approach to rapid application development that provides guidelines for citizen developers in a way that doesn’t create the equivalent of a black box that professional developers can’t later drill down into to determine how an application is behaving.

It may take a while for low-code application development and DevOps processes to meld within enterprise IT organizations. But the more DevOps tools that come included with the application development frameworks being provided, the greater the chances DevOps processes eventually will pervade the enterprise.

— Mike Vizard

October 9, 2018
The Big Digital Transformation Trends Through 2017

For a number of years now, the enterprise has been well underway in their digital transformation efforts, as they use data analytics, mobile, cloud services, IoT and other technologies to transform their organizations. But while some companies have embraced digital transformation, others have lagged. They’ll be playing catch-up in 2017, while their counterparts will be busy improving and accelerating processes where they can and building upon what has been achieved.

Based on my interviews in recent months with CIOs, chief digital marketers and chief digital officers, here are a number of big trends in digital transformation that I see in the year ahead:

Some CIOs continue to struggle to shake role as IT plumbers

As enterprise digital transformation continues, even accelerates, those CIOs who focused on keeping the lights on through ensuring the infrastructure and services were in place to keep data available rather that on driving digital initiatives forward will continue to see their relevance diminish.

Those who will lead forward with increased relevance will be the CIOs who focus on new ways for their organization to better support the business with the technologies they need to succeed and partner with the business units, rather than just provide the technological infrastructure for them to do it themselves.

Business alignment with IT remains a challenge

If you are a reader of devopsy.kinsta.cloud, you know alignment between the business and DevOps is crucial for enterprise success. In other words, IT leadership must deliver the technology the business actually needs and wants. Seems obvious and straightforward. And it is. It’s just proven to be a not very easy thing to accomplish.

According to the Deloitte 2016 – 2017 Global CIO Survey, the “business expectations of IT and IT capabilities are out of sync in several areas, including customer focus, technology-enabled business growth, and business innovation. For example, even though 57 percent of the CIOs surveyed said that customers were their organization’s top business priority, less than half were involved in delivering customer experience (45 percent) or working on customer acquisition, retention and loyalty (44 percent).”

That’s interesting enough. But the survey results got even more dismal: “Even though 78 percent of CIOs said that strategic alignment of IT activities with business strategy was critical to their success, only 5 percent said it was a leading-class capability in their IT organization.”

CIOs that want to not only thrive but—at the very least—survive are going to need to close this alignment gap.

Bimodal IT gains more traction

The concept of bimodal IT is a controversial one. Essentially, bimodal IT is a descriptor from the research firm Gartner that remarks how IT organizations have a need for both agile delivery of technology services and traditional delivery modes. In the Gartner model, so-called Mode 2 teams are focused on DevOps and agile delivery methods, while Mode 1 teams focus on delivering the more established applications in traditional and more predictable ways. A brief explanation of these terms from Gartner is available here.

Also, according to Gartner, nearly 40 percent of CIOs are currently practicing bimodal, with the majority of CIOs saying they will embrace bimodal sometime in the next three years. This signals to me that the proof of bimodal success is coming in and more enterprises will continue to follow.

The trend toward Citizen Developers increases

More enterprises in the year ahead will embrace the so-called citizen developer to provide some of the apps enterprises need. According to the QuickBase State of Citizen Development Report, 75 percent of those enterprises surveyed said that they develop more than three-fourths of the app and leave the “last mile” to the citizen developer. And, not surprisingly, most (65 percent) are building apps to get work done, while 42 percent build apps to run the business and 27 percent build apps targeting customers.

“These citizen developers can go a long way to help clear the application backlog. Per the report, 29 percent have seen a 2X or more increase in application development speeds. Over three-quarters or 76 percent of respondents cited operational efficiencies as the primary reason for using the platform. And a whopping 62 percent of Citizen Developers responded that it takes less than two weeks for them to complete an application, on average,” QuickBase’s John Carione wrote in this blog.

With increased demand for more mobile and web-based apps, and the ease with which many of these apps can be started using low-code and even no-code platforms, I fully expect more enterprises to find ways to encourage citizen development within their organizations.

CMOs, others outside traditional IT, continue to drive more IT budget

This trend has been underway for some time now, and I fully expect it to not just continue but accelerate. As was discussed in Sarah White’s story, “As CMOs Start to Outspend CIOs, Collaboration Remains Key,” “marketing has a growing influence on technology spending, with CMOs slated to spend more than CIOs by the year 2017. In fact, companies reported that 25 percent of their annual budget was spent on digital marketing efforts in 2014; and out of those companies, 51 percent plan to increase digital marketing budgets in 2015.”

As that continues, that means marketing is going to have a larger say in what technology services and platforms get investment in the year ahead. CIOs in organizations where the chief marketing officer is getting more and more budget will need to partner to stay relevant.

Digital transformation accelerates

According to this Digital Transformation Survey, a surprising 70 percent of c-suite respondents believe they are ahead, or way ahead, of others in their digital transformation initiatives. Compare that to only 30 percent of those in the line-of-business and other employees who believe the same.

For whatever reason, those in the c-suite are suffering from some form of cognitive disconnect when it comes to their digital transformation efforts. In the year ahead I think more c-level executives will see the reality of their digital transformation efforts and get to work on mobile and IoT and putting data analytics to better work.

— George V. Hulme

December 23, 2016
Are Companies’ Digital Transformations Near Complete? The C-Suite Thinks So

Enterprises have been busy in their digital transformation efforts for a number of years. They’ve been using data and software in efforts to renew and attempt to rejuvenate entire lines of their business, from streamlining deeply entrenched processes to creating entirely new business models. Interestingly, while many developers and IT leaders believe their efforts are mediocre and lagging their contemporaries, the C-suite seams convinced their digital transformation efforts are going great. That’s according to a recently released survey by QuickBase.

According to the Digital Transformation Survey, a surprising 70 percent of c-suite respondents believe they are ahead, or way ahead, of others in their digital transformation initiatives. Compare that to only 30 percent of those in the line of business and other employees who believe the same.

Such a wide discrepancy among top executives and line-of-business employees isn’t unusual. When it comes to IT security, for instance, c-level executives are not always in sync with their security teams regarding how mature their cybersecurity efforts are. This older, but relevant, story details what I mean. In the story, “Are you an IT security leader – really,” research revealed that of the more than 9,600 business and technology executives from around the world who took part in the survey, 43 percent believed their organizations are IT security leaders. However, when those responses were vetted for such leadership indicators as reporting structure, strategy, ability to respond to a breach and more, less than 5 percent of respondents actually made the cut.

However, in that survey—much like the recently released QuickBase survey—front-line practitioners were much less confident in the maturity of their program.

There have been signs of this discrepancy in digital transformation efforts in other surveys, such as, “The Persistence of Enterprise Tech Failure Rates,” and, “Developers Cite Startling Lack of Digital Leadership.” In the latter story, 40 percent of developers surveyed said that they have experienced failed development efforts due to lack of funding, and a third reported being concerned that current projects could be pulled for budgetary reasons.

Interestingly, it’s not c-level execs who typically are calling the shots when it comes to the digital transformation efforts in their enterprise. According to the survey, 47 percent said corporate IT was in charge of digital transformation, while the rest identified operations (30 percent) and line of business IT (21 percent) as the digital transformation leaders. Also, according to the QuickBase report, two-thirds of respondents said traditional IT app developers developed the digital transformation applications, while working with business users and managers occurred only 33 percent of the time. Not surprisingly, non- technical business users developed apps on their own less frequently.

Interestingly, the study found the barriers to adoption are lack of budget, management resistance and then lack of IT staff.

That lack of IT staff, the report concludes, is a reason why enterprises need to embrace their citizen developers. “Citizen developers, those in the line of business or operations who have the power to help transform their organizations from the bottoms up. These are the people who are closest to the work, but are often passed over in favor of more traditional IT leadership,” the report states.

The survey did show, disappointingly, that only 23 percent of non-IT staff in operations are developing the apps they need to make digital transformation in their departments a reality. But as we covered previously, the reality is that citizen developers can be the factor that help enterprises drive their digital transformation efforts swiftly and further forward.

Another persistent challenge is the lack of the skills enterprises need when it comes to digital transformation. Salesforce’s “State of IT” report, which we recently covered here, found that the IT skills demand gap is only getting worse. And as enterprises accelerate their digital transformation efforts, and invest more in mobile, data analytics and IoT, there will certainly be even less IT talent to go around. Roughly 30 percent of those in the report said their enterprises are having a very challenging time keeping the necessary IT skills sharp. Also, 72 percent said that IT skills development and training will be absolutely critical, or very important, for their team in the next five to eight years.

When it comes to leading successful digital transformation efforts, there’s no doubt that citizen developers are critical for enterprises to get done what they need to get done. Likewise, there’s also little doubt that the c-suite also needs to get a real realistic view of the work ahead regarding their organization’s digital transformation efforts.

August 31, 2016
Citizen Developers Can Benefit an Organization

In many organizations, IT resources are pushed to the breaking point while users increasingly demand new technologies, features and capabilities. Users who know a thing or two—often just enough to be dangerous—sometimes “expedite” matters by finding their own shadow IT solutions. Organizations can harness those efforts, though, as citizen developers by finding a way for IT and rogue users to work cooperatively toward a common goal.

Shadow IT can be a serious issue. Consequences arise when users store sensitive company data in the cloud using unsanctioned consumer-oriented services such as Dropbox or track customers or sales in a Google Sheets document. The company loses control and oversight of its own information because it no longer knows where it is, and IT can’t adequately protect data or processes it isn’t even aware of. Users who implement maverick solutions put the company and its data at risk.

On the flip side, these users understand best what is needed to get the job done. They’re the ones working in the trenches and whose employment depends on getting their job done effectively. IT might select or develop tools and mandate that users adopt them, but if they don’t deliver all of the capabilities users need—or worse, get in the way of efficient productivity—users often will take things into their own hands.

What if IT and employees work together? That is the promise of the citizen developers movement. It’s a recognition that IT has neither the resources nor the vision to deliver everything users need, while providing rogue users with a sanctioned framework for creating solutions that IT can approve and manage.

Michael Beckley, CTO of Appian, explained that “shadow IT” is a pejorative term used to describe business teams bypassing IT and enterprise architecture governance to purchase systems that may create disconnected silos. Citizen developers can leverage shadow IT or sanctioned IT. Most successful IT organizations embrace low-code platforms and other technologies that enable citizen developers to operate securely and transparently within IT’s domain.

“The best-designed products have always been built with the needs of the user from the outset,” Beckley said. “Who better than citizen developers to design software that enables organizations to transform customer experiences, launch compelling new products and manage risk efficiently? Citizen developers are motivated by the opportunity to create a new reality, not merely accepting the workplace as they found it.”

Organizations typically enable citizen developers by providing a cloud-based, low-code platform that enables IT to create managed integrations to core systems, and maintain governance and security without significantly limiting the creativity of users.

“Citizen developers are most successful when supported by IT,” Beckley said. “One critical area where IT can help is in promoting reuse and modularity in the applications and business processes that citizen developers build.”

Having worked in the trenches as an IT admin, I have firsthand experience dealing with maverick users who try to circumvent policies and go around IT. At the time, I saw that as an attack on my authority in my role as an IT admin. A lot has changed since then, though—both with the technologies and services available, and my own attitude. I have come to recognize that users know best what they want and need, and there should not be an adversarial relationship between IT and users.

By embracing citizen developers, organizations can harness that ingenuity and innovation to help make the whole company more productive.

August 4, 2016
Should Citizen Developers be Welcome in DevOps?

“We’re all developers now. Citizen developer activities will accelerate.” That’s what Gartner predicted back in 2012. Fast forward more than four years and we’ve seen the DevOps movement explode, while the rise of citizen developers has also marched steadily. The challenge for organizations is to figure out how these two philosophies co-exist and complement one another.

What are “citizen developers”? The 2015 State of Citizen Development report defines them as, “… empowered problem-solvers from the various lines of business who have the drive and determination to engage in app development even though they lack traditional coding skills.”

DevOps is about agility and momentum. Automation. Continuous continuousness. The culture and tools that comprise DevOps are all about moving faster—facilitating better collaboration and streamlining processes to accelerate the development and deployment of applications. That more rapid pace relies heavily on automation, in most cases, and still has rules and procedures to manage how things are developed, tested, integrated and deployed.

The citizen developer movement, on the other hand, is sort of an evolution of rogue or shadow IT. There has always been “that guy” in any given company. The one who is too impatient to follow procedures or wait for IT to deploy a solution, and who knows just enough to be dangerous and brew his own unsanctioned tools. Citizen developers harness that same “maverick” attitude, but in a more acceptable and manageable way.

Platforms like Intuit Quickbase or Genesis from Metavine provide users with little or no coding experience with the tools to create effective applications without writing a single line of code. It may seem like that encroaches on the work of developers and confuses things, but there are two caveats to that. First, the users are in the trenches and have an intimate understanding of the issues they’re trying to solve—so theoretically they’re best-suited for solving them. Second, if citizen developers can use code their own solutions for the “low-hanging fruit,” then developers are free to focus on solving more complex business problems and developing more innovative solutions.

Metavine explains, “This approach for generating Cloud and IoT applications places more responsibility in the hands of the people who define business needs, freeing them from typical engineering constraints. Application development becomes more collaborative and highly creative, involving technologists, solutions architects, designers, and line of business people performing cross-functional work to produce agile business results.”

Craig Sproule, founder and CEO of Metavine, provided a description of Genesis. “It is a true zero code application development platform designed to enable the creation of enterprise-class applications. It allows developers and architects to build applications to meet exacting needs, while delivering unprecedented agility to the business.”

While at first glance it would seem that having a bunch of rogue citizen developers implementing their own home-grown apps is a bad idea and would complicate and conflict efforts to streamline development through DevOps. But the reality is that they can co-exist peacefully. Using the right tools and platforms, citizen developers can help solve some of their own problems more quickly and let developers focus on solving more complex problems.

July 6, 2016
DevOps Brings IT Out of the Shadows

One of the biggest threats to organizations today is shadow IT—unsanctioned and unknown technologies and applications being employed by maverick users. Shadow IT represents a security risk for your company—the IT department can’t defend and protect technologies and assets it doesn’t know about—and should be eliminated. One of the best defenses against shadow IT is DevOps.

When I worked in the trenches as a one-man IT department—part network admin, part tech support—there always were one or two individuals who knew enough to be dangerous. As frustrating as it was to deal with completely clueless users who didn’t know the difference between the computer and the monitor and weren’t even really sure where the power button was, those who knew enough to go rogue and reconfigure their devices or introduce new applications and services were a more existential problem for the organization. In today’s era of BYOD and cloud services, shadow IT is a scourge significantly greater than what I faced.

Don’t get me wrong—I’ve also been on the other side of that equation and I understand the motivation that drives shadow IT. Users just want to get their jobs done, and the people in the trenches know better than anyone what the hurdles are and how to fix them. Requesting new technologies or capabilities from IT is a cumbersome and tedious process at many organizations, so in the name of expediency users just do what they need to do on their own.

DevOps can help solve the shadow IT problem in a better and more sustainable way, though. There are two benefits that DevOps brings to the table that minimize the potential for shadow IT: More rapid development and empowering individuals.

First, an IT organization that has embraced DevOps will be quicker to respond to requests from users. Replacing the traditional software development life cycle with a more agile and continuous pace of development means that feature requests can be incorporated much faster.

Second, one of the cornerstones of DevOps is the underlying culture—the breaking down of silos and removal of barriers and bureaucratic nonsense that get in the way of efficient progress. Essentially, those rogue technologies and applications that comprise shadow IT in other organizations are simply a part of the larger DevOps whole in an organization that has embraced DevOps. There is even a term ascribed to users outside of traditional IT/developer roles who develop solutions: “citizen developers.”

The 2015 State of Citizen Development Report explains in more detail what a citizen developer is: “Citizen Developers are empowered problem-solvers from the various lines of business who have the drive and determination to engage in app development even though they lack traditional coding skills.”

That isn’t to suggest that in a DevOps world everyone can just go set up virtual servers, or store data on personal cloud services and that it’s OK. It just means that when users are given the tools and freedom to develop solutions that have the blessing of IT and the rest of the organization, they don’t need to function in the shadows.

Embracing DevOps and the citizen developer movement enables IT to work in harmony with users to develop solutions that work rather than fighting against each other and ending up with shadow IT servers, applications and cloud services that IT isn’t even aware of. Organizations that are concerned about the impact of shadow IT should look at ways to harness the power rather than just trying to ban shadow IT completely.

February 16, 2016