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Why Developer-First is the Future of AppSec
DevOps culture and rapid cloud adoption mean developers are shipping code faster than ever and, in many cases, security teams struggle to keep up. To avoid relegating security to afterthought status, organizations must shift left and adopt a developer-first approach to application security (AppSec).

Organizations that depend on software development need a solution that accomplishes two essential things to adapt and survive: Risk-appropriate security measures and an even distribution of functions across the stack. First, risk-appropriate security measures must be applied to all software before it is delivered or deployed. Second, they must adopt processes that enable security functions to be distributed across the development stack in a way that will not slow down the pace of development.

Just as the entire development process starts with developers, integrating security should also start with a developer-first approach. Developer-first AppSec is the future; here’s how organizations can evaluate tools that will help them adopt a developer-first approach.

Why Developer-First is the Future

Developers outnumber application security engineers by as many as 100 to one, and AppSec functions cannot scale if security practitioners are the only ones responsible for security. This imbalance suggests that organizational leaders must better distribute security ownership across the developer teams that own the software asset.

As it stands today, many companies expect developers to build and deploy software faster than ever before. Security teams often can not keep pace with software development, and they become a roadblock to software delivery. To meet project development deadlines and their key performance indicators (KPIs), developers tend to leave security teams behind. They do not have the time or the incentive to slow down development because application security tools or processes are slow and cannot keep up.

Security and developers are at cross-purposes in today’s software development model. They are pseudo-adversaries because AppSec teams know what it takes to make code secure, or at least they know how to find vulnerabilities. And, on the other hand, developers need to write code that works well and meets the sprint’s deadline.

Friction Between Teams

This growing problem creates friction between these two teams. It’s not that security teams don’t care about the organization’s need to produce quality software quickly or that developers don’t care about security. It’s just that each team is measured and incentivized to achieve opposing objectives. AppSec programs must create a developer-first approach to building software quickly and securely to combat this growing problem.

It is not feasible for organizational leaders to provide security engineers with the entire business or environmental context behind software applications. In this sense, AppSec teams are working with limited vision. They may not see how the software fits into the organization’s big picture or understand its priorities.

With limited contextual understanding, security teams necessarily rely on developers to make decisions about acceptable risks. If left to their own devices to view the world through a security-centric lens, AppSec teams could get bogged down—potentially spending too much time enforcing security measures that do not apply to the task at hand.
Since developers are building the software and know what the services are designed to do, security engineers must defer to a developer-first approach so that decisions about security issues will align with the business context and acceptable levels of risk.

Finding a Developer-First AppSec Platform

Below is a condensed guide to help organization leaders evaluate potential AppSec platforms. These questions will help identify a solution that will enable the organization to build a developer-first security program.

Will the solution flood the developers and AppSec team with more and more results, or will this help them fix the essential gaps?

Will the solution provide context to help developers focus their limited time on security work that matters, or will it end up wasting time on things that may not even present a risk?

Will the solution help build security measures as guardrails to prevent security issues in the first place?

Is the solution flexible enough to enable building custom application security checks and policies in the SDLC?

Does the solution provide flexible ways of communicating actionable security information directly to developers in real-time within dev tools like source control systems, CI/CD platforms or engineering task management systems?

There are an overwhelming number of application security solutions on the market today, most of which are designed to create security alerts about every conceivable threat regardless of the business context of the software being developed. More tools are then needed to manage the identified vulnerabilities.

What This Future Will Look Like

AppSec teams must recast themselves as security facilitators providing expertise for solving complex challenges and maintaining oversight of the developer teams’ security efforts. Developers should own tactical security tasks, but the AppSec team should continue to be the experts in making risk-based decisions and driving security accountability across the business.

Inside many organizations, application security is only beginning to become integrated into developer workflows. This integration creates both opportunities and challenges. As organizations strive to make AppSec an enabler that aids developers in creating secure software quickly, developer-first AppSec programs let businesses make their digital transformation journey safer and faster.
February 7, 2022
4 Ways to Uplevel Your Software Engineering Team

In my 20 years leading software development teams, I’ve witnessed the industry’s continuous growth alongside technology’s evolution. The only thing we know for certain is that the industry will continue to change and winning businesses will be those that build with change in mind, backed by effective, fast-moving software teams.

This is the year we must focus on fine-tuning our DevOps processes and uplevel our teams, but where do we start?

Below are four ways you can begin to transform your teams into engineering powerhouses, no matter how big or small or where they are in the world.

1. Embrace New Delivery Models

Remember when deployments were a big deal; a highly-anticipated event that often meant late nights? These days, many teams have managed to make deployments a non-event and are deploying any time of day. Those that haven’t adapted risk being left behind. The rate of deployments will only increase, so how teams handle this progression will be a deciding factor for success in an already competitive field.

In 2022, teams should continuously evaluate their procedures as they push the boundaries of their tech stack. Navigating the complexity of the digital era—from massive datasets and machine learning to networks of third-party services—will force both developers and company leaders to embrace flexible tooling and processes to ultimately refine the risk/innovation tradeoff.

2. Prioritize People and Culture

While 2021’s Great Resignation saw many software professionals jumping ship in search of a fresh work environment, in 2022 we expect to see a Great Reshuffle. Realizing their new or current gig still may not be quite the right fit, engineers and developers will start looking for roles that are more in line with their long-term career and personal goals.

Don’t fear this reshuffle. Instead, recognize it as an opportunity to build a strong and stable team. Be honest about what, exactly, the job entails and the hard and soft skills you’re looking for. Honesty throughout the recruitment process leads to a better match between employer and employee and also contributes to resilient company culture.

3. Deploy Low-Code Solutions Strategically

Pressure to get the highest productivity out of software development teams has led to the adoption of no-code and low-code solutions. But that means these tools are being used predominantly by people who already know how to code. The folks with big ideas who don’t actually want to be programmers remain unserved and untapped.

Expect this disparity to soon lead to a split in the category of no-code and low-code solutions—those built specifically for optimizing developer teams, and those that can serve everyday creators. To really get the most out of your team, keep an eye on the low-code space and ensure the solution you use is the one that’s actually best suited for your goals.

4. Build With Change Validation in Mind

The growing adoption of cloud storage, service-oriented architectures, third-party API-based services and open source code (to name a few) makes modern software development monumentally complex.

A way to manage this complexity is by pulling our focus away from the application itself and onto myriad sources of change that affect the application—a concept we can think of as change validation.

Ultimately, change validation builds upon tried-and-true software best practices such as continuous integration, continuous delivery and release orchestration. Cloud-native architectures can be effective and scalable, but you need to have the right tools and systems in place to validate changes to your code at every step.

In the past, the general consensus was that you shouldn’t test in production; you should just release and wait for the bug reports to tell you what’s wrong. But in the world of extensive software supply chains and cloud-native architectures, testing in production is the only way to truly know whether changes to your code are working as intended before releasing software to customers.

In the new year, software developers will be of critical importance as organizations continue to expand on digital services and projects. Embracing new methods of software delivery, prioritizing people and culture and keeping an eye on how to best leverage automation tools like no-code/low-code and change validation will all help to transform your team for the better in 2022. This forward-looking approach and a willingness to reassess and pivot guarantees that your software engineering team will remain agile amidst a rapidly changing tech landscape.

February 7, 2022
Developer Familiarity is Key to Digital Success

For some time, the goal of digital transformation was to replace legacy systems. It became a battle between all that was new and shiny and that which was old, outdated and “had to go.” However, this philosophy has since shifted as companies realized two crucial facts.

First, legacy systems are often too important to be phased out entirely for traditional organizations—given SQL’s flexibility and familiarity among developers, for example. As a result, many of these legacy applications and systems are instead being converted into virtual versions of their former selves.

Also, while it’s not impossible for some organizations to reinvent themselves as greenfield businesses that rely entirely on new, cutting-edge technologies, that is a route that is usually resource-intensive and time-consuming for many companies, at least for the foreseeable future.

Second, tossing out legacy systems disrupts existing skills—and not in a good way—especially given that 64% of digital architects report being locked into using them because they have invested heavily in the relevant skills. Furthermore, overtly focusing on new talent excludes many IT professionals with well-honed skills and considerable knowledge about business processes and systems relationships. And, at the same time, digital skills are expensive—not just to acquire but also to upskill. Even startups—which often have a literal “system blank check”—are facing skills constraints, and many are considering bringing more established skills into emerging tech environments.

The Developer Skills Problem

Digital transformation is now in the spotlight thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, and project managers have consequently accrued valuable experience on what makes transformation projects successful. Recent surveys conducted by 451 Research revealed that 44% of companies are well into the execution stages of their transformation strategies and of that group, 66% are starting to see success. Another 10% declared their transformation projects to be a complete success.

Archimedes said he could move the planet with a sufficiently large lever. For digital transformation goals, skills are that tectonic lever. According to a report from WorldSkills UK, 60% of businesses believe that their reliance on advanced digital skills will increase. Pressure relating to skills requirements is not going anywhere, and the competition between legacy and new technologies only compounds it further.

As you might expect, developers are caught in the middle. As the world digitizes—witness the acceleration of digital projects over the past two years—developers have emerged as the heroes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 92% of respondents to a Couchbase survey agreed with that statement. Around 63% also revealed that a proper development culture allowed them the flexibility to change their goals pertaining to digital transformation outcomes.

Yet whenever digital projects get stuck, developers are often blamed for the delays. According to the same research, at least one-fifth of developers do not have the skills or access to technology that they need. Many also aren’t given the support or space to deliver and an astounding 49% say they are being asked to do too much in too little time.

Digital transformation projects have been increasingly successful, and we can thank developers for much of that success. But those successes haven’t alleviated the pressures or problems surrounding skills, and many projects consequently still get stuck. Furthermore, a recent report by Gartner found that IT executives are struggling to source skills that enable cloud and edge adoption.

Legacy is Not the Enemy

If we combine these points (the need for continual support for legacy, emerging modernization demands, increasing developer skills shortages and the fate of established technology experts), they appear to be at odds with each other. Something must give, right?

Not necessarily. There is growing acknowledgment that orphaning legacy skills is a mistake. Doing so can cannibalize skill sets and business knowledge that should be retained. There’s also the realization that we don’t need to juxtapose legacy and newer technologies. Modern systems can incorporate and even absorb legacy environments, coding languages and processes.

Modern multi-model databases provide a good example. At a high level, we can group databases into relational (SQL) and non-relational (NoSQL) systems. SQL databases cannot provide the agility NoSQL systems are known for, yet it’s a technology approach that still delivers many benefits. Multi-model database systems, where a SQL developer can use SQL coding on a NoSQL system, accomplish both.

A New Place for Established Developer Skills

Creating this familiarity is essential for successful digital projects. Focusing exclusively on broad reskilling or continually hunting for new talent aren’t the only ways to meet the demands required by modern enterprises. Instead of asking if developers can go to the mountain, vendors should ask: Can we bring the mountain to the developers?

Deploying new technologies that can leverage existing developer skills is becoming increasingly popular. Besides certain databases, we also see this with mainframes connected to web services via APIs and using microservices to accentuate specific parts of legacy environments.

Consider Lehman’s famous laws of software evolution, among which are familiarity and organizational stability. Most modernization projects ignore these two laws in favor of brute force progress. But digital modernization is a journey, and every successful journey needs all hands on deck—not dead weight and stowaways. Providing developers that which they already know best in a new environment is the key to digital success.

November 9, 2021
From One-Click Deployment to One-Click Feedback
What makes a group of individual contributors a team?

You can look at today’s product development teams as an ensemble of craftspeople from different disciplines. Code builders, design artists, storytellers, and an orchestrator. Similar to an orchestra, their output is based on the ability of each and every one of them to work together in harmony, continuously and collaboratively.

Let’s dig a bit deeper into today’s development methodology to see what this means in a practical sense.

At a high level, we see three major steps: planning, development and release.
1. Planning = Empower design craft
2. Development = Empower code building craft
3. Release = Optimize time-to-market (since there is no more time for nonsense!)
Despite the fact that teams are supposed to work together and be very in tune with each other, when we look at the reality, it’s very different. We actually work in silos, nurturing black-box thinking. Instead of collaboration, often there are three separate units that comprise a whole, solely with interfacing endpoints.

In such a configuration, it’s unavoidable that one unit’s priorities will be disruptive to another’s work, or flow. Without better integration of the actual collaborative parts of the work, in the form of frictionless and ongoing feedback throughout and during the end-to-end planning, development and release processes, eventually, your own unit’s priorities will take precedence over another’s.

Engineering IRL

A typical engineering process, whether it’s a new feature being developed, a bug fix or any other kind of collaborative work, usually looks like this:
- A developer receives a design handoff and, from that moment on, is expected to deliver a working manifestation of the design specifications.
- The developer gets to work (whether solo or on the dev team; independent of product or design, at this point) based on the specifications and starts writing the code.
- Once completed, the code is deployed to a pre-release staging environment, where the designer actually experiences the result of their craft for the very first time.
If you’ve been through similar processes, you’ll agree that, by this point, there is rarely time or tolerance in the process to iterate or provide feedback, nor correct much at all. More often than not, the mindset in fast-moving organizations is to stick with what we have ready to ship and just move forward. The actual “collaborative” part of the work is essentially bypassed. It’s really just a relay race of passing the baton downstream.

But this engineering paradigm has its consequences. Ever tried to dissuade an artist from providing their feedback? Expect a pretty bad vibe in the room (or virtual room in today’s hybrid and remote team structure).

This example, of course, is actually a virtual utopia of the development process. In reality, most organizations today have a far more destructive culture of continuous disruptions.

Now, let’s spice up the scenario with some real-world interruptions that often break the ongoing individual flow.

When a craftsperson is in the zone and creating, don’t interrupt! But what can you do when there are so many things happening in parallel? In small organizations that are just ramping up, most people are juggling much more work simultaneously.

What often happens looks a lot like this:

Jolene from sales requires a specific version for customizing a demo for a super important customer; Marko from support has opened 31 tickets you have yet to handle since it is a production issue that affects end users; your beloved single staging environment broke and you can’t review any new feature—oh, and don’t forget to attend the three meetings scheduled for today.

Frustration, anyone? I like to call it the ‘multi-context bad habit.’

Okay, I can already sense some eyebrows being raised, and I can almost hear you saying, “Yeah?! So what? We’ve always worked this way—what’s the issue??” Allow me to show you some numbers that may surprise you.

“Finding flow is key, and interruptions are a drag. Minimal or no interruptions give developers an 82% chance of having a good day, but interruptions throughout the day decrease the chance of a good day to just 7%.”

Eirini Kalliamvakou

“Meetings are both awesome and terrible. Collaboration improves our work, but too many meetings can be a blocker; going from two to three meetings per day lowered the chances of making progress toward their goals by 60%.”

Dr. Nicole Forsgren

To summarize, these data points basically indicate that disruptions, interruptions and the “multi-context bad habit” ultimately have a tangible, detrimental impact on results and outcomes. They diminish successful outcomes and delivery times by orders of magnitude.

Zero-Click Deployments as a Culture

Fortunately, there are multiple practices and tools today that can be leveraged to dissipate the friction, break down the silos and improve the flow.

This can be achieved by evolving from one-click deployment to zero-click deployments. Allow me to explain.

Today, we have enough working examples that could (and should) be replicated more widely in engineering practices. Here are some examples.

Preview Environments

Preview environments (sometimes referred to as ephemeral or PR environments) provide, well, the opportunity to preview products. By allowing multiple stakeholders to review and experience the product throughout the development process, you shift-left the way you manage your development processes and are able to provide the relevant feedback and fixes earlier in the process. This basically means that for any PR you get a live environment that is shareable and independent from your staging environment. (I like to call this an in-development feedback loop).

The JAMStack

Another good example can be taken from JAMstack. When JAMstacking, consider using Netlify, Vercel or AWS Amplify to gain this capability for your team.

Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC)

If your project is non-JAMstack, you can consider building a similar preview environment through IaC solutions like Terraform or Pulumi. The downside here is that this comes with quite a bit of hassle, as you have to build automation for every single PR to have a dedicated shareable URL of the environment for review.

This is great, though, because it democratizes the PR approval cycle by being more inclusive. Project managers, designers—practically anyone can review and approve the PR in development without having to wait until the end of the process to provide input. It’s easy to manage as it is isolated and independent of staging, which also provides always-on issue reproduction ability in the event that some kind of bug was discovered or tests need to be run during the development phase.

But it also isn’t all roses and sunshine.

There are some gaps and challenges that still need to be overcome for this to work. Some examples:

How do we streamline feedback?

Developers are used to getting comments from peers during code review in a language they can understand easily (for the most part) and quickly merge the input into their project. They don’t lose context by navigating away from the tool they’re working in (e.g. to Slack or Acme Corp. Task Manager), as it keeps them in their source code management environment (SCM). We need to think about how can we offer the same developer experience for everyone in the process to minimize PR turnover.

How do we provide actionable and quality feedback?

For example, UI and behavioral issue reporting are time-consuming, since you have to document and explain what, exactly, needs to be changed in order for it to be effective. Any wanted change likely involves the developer, which adds yet another disruption and interruption to their day.

Taking Zero-Click Deployments to Single-Click Feedback

If we want to optimize the developers’ flow, the next phase after simplifying the deployment aspects is to see how we add in the feedback layer in a way that isn’t intrusive.

We need to now take this mindset and empower what I like to call one-click feedback.

This isn’t a new concept, of course. Let’s take some inspiration from collaboration tools we all love like Figma, Miro and Notion.

What’s magical about each and every one of these tools is the ability to provide contextual feedback. This is important as it enables contextual collaboration. Any user is basically one click away from sharing their feedback while remaining in-context, increasing the potential for feedback to be dealt with frictionlessly.

This makes possible the following core values:
1. Any person can easily point out something which requires the creator’s attention.
2. The creator can instantly understand the feedback within the context of the project and what they are working on, and reply or tag another relevant peer for their point of view.
3. The creator doesn’t leave their main work environment to prioritize the new task or give it the attention it requires. Just as designers do not leave Figma to apply feedback, PMs don’t need to leave Miro to apply theirs, and so on.
These tools welcome feedback in an inclusive manner while enforcing a frictionless workflow. No one is messing with the creator’s flow as it is also happening asynchronously—no need for meetings, syncs or coordination of multiple stakeholders. This is also much more inclusive and relevant for today’s remote work culture, which requires investment in team communication through asynchronous channels and processes to be effective. (Here’s a great talk to watch on this topic; yes, the irony of interrupting your flow to watch this video is not lost. No, Really, Don’t Chuck Everything in Slack: Communications for Distributed Teams – from Florian Haas)

Assuming you find some truth in this, I’d like to address the now apparent elephant in the room: Why don’t we introduce the same abilities for in-development collaboration?

One-Click Feedback-as-Code

We’re starting to see a trend where framework-coupled companies like Netlify and Vercel, for example, are adding collaboration aspects to their offering. Netlify, in fact, is acquiring a company, FeaturePeek, to embed collaboration features on top of their preview environments, and Next.js starting an early access rollout of their Next.js Live product.

Imagine developers getting inclusive feedback during the PR approval cycle; not only comments about their code from peers but also UI, design and behavior comments with all of the needed assets and context to move forward without leaving their work environment! Such a shift will have a measurable impact on time-to-market, quality and velocity when employing such a workflow.

The main premise here is that to achieve better metrics associated with flow (as noted above by Dr. Nicole Forsgren), we should not mess with the flow. The benefits of reducing the friction and interruptions in creators’ flow are exponential and will enable us to get closer to working in tune and in harmony (if we stick with the orchestral references) or simply more collaboratively, as a team where each individual is always maximizing the time they are able to be in creation mode, without silos or black boxes.

What do you think? What’s your view of how teams should work together? How do you handle flow within your organization?
July 27, 2021
Open Source Languages and Tools for z/OS

Open Source Languages and Tools for z/OS

Empower your developers to use their preferred open source languages. We offer many open source languages and tools—including Git, R and Python—that allow any developer to harness the power of the mainframe without having to spend months learning new skills.

Git

Git is a version control system (VCS) for tracking changes in computer files and coordinating work on those files among multiple people. It is primarily used for software development, but it can be used to keep track of changes in any files. The z/OS port of git supports automatic tagging and conversion of text files between ISO8859-1 (ASCII) and IBM-1047 (EBCDIC) character encodings.

Bash

Bash is an sh-compatible shell providing users a command-line interpreter that provides a traditional interface via text window and a script execution capability. It is the default shell on Linux and Mac OS X.

Bison

Bison is a programming utility for creating parsers. It’s commonly used in both build automation and build automation generation, and converts annotated context-free grammar into a C, C++, or Java parser. Bison is used by PHP, Bash, Ruby, and many other tools.

bzip2

bzip2 is a data compressor that compresses single files (it is not a file archiver). It typically compresses files to within 10% to 15% of the best available techniques of statistical compressors, while being around twice as fast at compression and six times faster at decompression. This version of bzip2 was not written to exploit z Systems architecture; gzip may work best for these needs.

cURL

cURL is an open source tool that can transfer data to and from servers by using one of the supported protocols (HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, TFTP, DICT, TELNET, LDAP, or FILE). This tool can work without user interaction. cURL functionality includes proxy support, user authentication, FTP upload, HTTP post, SSL connections, cookies, file transfer, resume, and more.

Diffutils

Diffutils is a package of several programs intended to find differences between files. The diff command, for example, shows exact line differences between two files.

Gzip

Gzip is a popular data compression/decompression program (our ported tools have been compressed using this utility). This version of Gzip has also been modified to exploit z/OS EDC compression hardware, if present on your system.

libssh2

libssh2 is a software library that allows developers to use the SSH-2 network protocol in an easy-to-use self-contained package. This package only contains LIBSSH2 libraries intended for use by other programs or utilities.

m4

M4 is a general-purpose macro processor. Most users require M4 simply as a dependency of Autoconf or Bison, although the language is used in other contexts such as text template re-use, text editing and text-processing applications.

Make

Make controls the generation of program executables and other non-source files from the program’s source files. Make allows users to build, install and update packages without knowing the process details.

Mktemp

The mktemp utility takes a given filename template and overwrites a portion of it to create a unique filename. Mktemp also manages the creation of temporary files and directories that allow the user to avoid the cleaning up files that are not needed permanently.

OpenSSL

OpenSSL is a software library to be used in applications that need to secure communications against eavesdropping or need to ascertain the identity of the party at the other end.

Pkg-Config

pkg-Config is a programming tool that assists with compiling applications and libraries. It helps you insert the correct compiler options on the command line without the need of hard coding values on where to find glib (or other libraries).

Sed

sed (stream editor) is a utility for parsing and transforming text. It is typically used for extracting part of a file using pattern matching, or substituting multiple occurrences of a string within a file.

sudo

sudo is a command-line utility that allows admins to delegate authority, giving certain users the ability to run commands as a super-user or another user, while providing an audit trail of the commands and their arguments.

Unzip

UnZip is an extraction utility for archives compressed in .zip format. Unzip is also compatible with PKZIP and PKUNZIP utilities for MS-DOS as well as Info-ZIP’s and supports bzip2 compression methods as well.

Vim

Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to make creating and changing any kind of text very efficient.

Zip

Zip is a compression and file packaging/archive utility. Zip puts one or more compressed files into a single ZIP archive, along with information about the files.

zlib

zlib is a general-purpose, lossless data compression library providing in-memory compression and decompression functions, including integrity checks of the uncompressed data.

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June 28, 2021
CircleCI CEO Sees Growing Need for Developer Experience Engineers

There is no shortage of titles to go with all the tasks that make up a DevOps workflow, but given the critical role developers now play within any organization, it might be time for organizations to start creating a developer experience engineer (DXE) function within DevOps teams that is specifically tasked with increasing developer productivity.

CircleCI CEO Jim Rose said it’s become apparent there is more friction than ever in the application development and deployment process, as more complex applications are constructed, thanks, in part, to the rise of microservices.

A DXE, as outlined in a report published by CircleCI, would be responsible for implementing a common set of DevOps principles, maintaining the right tools and putting in place a cohesive set of standard processes that ensure developer success. Today, there are simply too many languages, frameworks, engineering styles and processes being employed within the same organization, and that conspires to reduce overall developer productivity, said Rose.

While software engineers are, today, addressing subsets of these issues, Rose said the time has come to assign these tasks to an engineering team that views itself as an advocate for developers by making available more responsive infrastructure.

As organizations of all sizes increasingly realize how dependent they are on software to drive digital business transformation initiatives, Rose noted that developer productivity is becoming a major corporate issue. Revenue forecasts and profit margins are now being directly impacted by the rate at which software is being delivered and updated.

Software engineers today routinely build DevOps pipelines for developers, but not much time and effort is put into optimizing the developer experience, noted Rose. That’s become not only a major productivity issue, Rose said, it has a material impact on the ability of organizations to attract and retain developer talent. One of the reasons so many developers prefer to work for smaller startups than large enterprises is because their daily work experience is simply better. Large organizations need to reduce the amount of friction developers experience if they want to be able to compete for that same talent, said Rose.

A DXE would also be more inclined to solicit input from developers on tool selection to best optimize productivity, noted Rose. Many software engineers today construct pipelines with little to no regard for how simple or hard it might be for a developer to employ tooling.

Organization today are, of course, starting to become more obsessed with measuring application development velocity. However, in many cases, simply making someone responsible for achieving a goal is going to result in more gains at a lower cost. Analytics tools have a role to play, but obsessing over key performance indicators (KPIs) may not generate the same result as quickly as simply giving an engineer a specific mandate.

As responsibility for application management continues to shift left toward developers, it should not come as a surprise that there is a lot more interest in automating the underlying infrastructure. The issue, at this point, is determining to what degree software engineers are going to achieve that goal versus forcing developers to seek out yet another platform that promises to do it on their behalf.

June 28, 2021
Low-Code Opens API Integration Potential for Citizen Developers
APIs have an accessibility problem. Could a low-code API approach make them more inclusive and accessible for citizen developers?

Most software today integrates with third-party SaaS. TomTom for geolocation. Stripe for payment. Twilio for SMS. Kairos for facial recognition. AWS for NLP … the list goes on. Whatever function you’re looking for, there’s probably an API for that.

These specialized utilities help software teams avoid reinventing the wheel for things outside of their core competency. They’re standardized, too — most services are programmable following REST or GraphQL guidelines. Serving integrations over HTTP aids in decoupling the business logic from the client interface. Furthermore, OpenAPI Specification, now part of the Linux Foundation, has risen as a standard description format, making APIs more defined and interoperable.

However, for all this progress, there’s still friction in the integration process, even for seasoned developers. Each API is a bit unique. It takes time to read through the documentation to authenticate and discover methods, parameters and accepted fields. It requires effort to test requests within Postman, decipher error messages and set up calls within your unique environment. On top of all this, downtime and breaking changes are legitimate concerns for over-the-wire dependencies.

APIs require effort and maintenance, and just integrating third-party APIs alone won’t build you a fully functional application. Yet, organizations find themselves scrambling to find and hire engineers, and increasingly the onus is on non-tech folks to create new digital workflows. Naturally, companies are currently searching for even more low-code solutions.

So, what’s the glue holding together API products? How can we better connect APIs to the software applications we’re already building and allow citizen developers to reap the benefits?

My theory: If low-code platforms decrease the API integration hurdle, more problem-solvers can stitch together business utilities to create more advanced internal applications. Making third-party APIs more inclusive for citizen developers could boost the API economy at large and enable creative solutions to flourish throughout enterprises.

The Need for Low-Code API Integration

Perhaps the best way to demonstrate the need for low-code is to scare you with some code. Let’s say you want your application to initiate a direct deposit into a bank account.

You don’t want to build a financial service from scratch, so you turn to Stripe API. You set up an account, grab a key, and dig in to the ‘Getting Started’ materials. You peruse their comprehensive documentation, and find out how to create a payout.

The docs demonstrate a sample HTTP curl request for creating a payout. Other parameters to pass include destination, methodor source_type.
```
curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/payouts \
 -u sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc: \
 -d amount=1100 \
 -d currency=usd
```
If there are no errors with the request, the response will be a payout object, formatted in structured JSON. It details the balance, data created, currency type and other fields. It looks something like this:
```
{
 "id": "po_1HmNKQ2eZvKYlo2CuRNBRWUW",
 "object": "payout",
 "amount": 1100,
 "arrival_date": 1605116514,
 "automatic": true,
 "balance_transaction": "txn_1032HU2eZvKYlo2CEPtcnUvl",
 "created": 1605116514,
 "currency": "usd",
 "description": "STRIPE PAYOUT",
 "destination": "ba_1HmNKQ2eZvKYlo2CzlT6m5gk",
 "failure_balance_transaction": null,
 "failure_code": null,
 "failure_message": null,
 "livemode": false,
 "metadata": {},
 "method": "standard",
 "original_payout": null,
 "reversed_by": null,
 "source_type": "card",
 "statement_descriptor": null,
 "status": "in_transit",
 "type": "bank_account"
}
```
Now, you can parse the response into data your application can ingest. You can also send other requests to update, return and cancel this payout object.

For specialists familiar with HTTP calls and JSON, this is pretty straightforward. Stripe docs typically generate sample requests for many languages, like PHP, Ruby, Python and others to help within your own environment.

But what if your users are more comfortable with UIs? Integrations are pretty opaque to the non-technical. Even for seasoned developers, APIs can quickly become too dense, and not all have a great developer experience.

Hurdles In API Integration

There are many issues preventing non-tech-savvy users and novice programmers from inserting API-driven business logic into their applications:
- Onboarding time: Setting up an account, acquiring authentication, reading docs and testing calls to familiarize yourself all takes time.
- Data Types: Data passed in headers must conform to explicit data types, or else requests may fail.
- Parsing: Responses are often too verbose; developers must parse the JSON object responses to retrieve the data they need.
- Programming language: Each language handles network communication differently, meaning requests look different in every language.
- Breaking Change: Third-party services change often, so if you’re not actively maintaining an integration, you may face breaking change.
- Differing formats: There are various API standards. REST, SOAP, GraphQL all are designed a bit differently. Plus, webhooks, event-driven and publish-subscribe patterns have nuanced communication models.
- Security and legal: If APIs aren’t appropriately secured, hackers could easily steal user data or cause outages.
As you can see, a simple programming task like “make a bank deposit” becomes extremely complex the more closely we look at the logistics of actual implementation.

Furthermore, just because you’ve made an integration work, that doesn’t mean you have a fully-functional application, securely deployed in the cloud, with a friendly UI that’s universally accessible. A single application may have numerous integrations, meaning the integration process must be duplicated for every external service you connect.

API Categories

Overcoming these challenges is a lot to ask of non-professional developers, who may not be comfortable consuming business applications from the command line. This issue is further compounded as integration extends beyond public APIs, too.

In a recent interview with Divyesh Kharade, co-founder/CEO at DronaHQ, he identified three main API categories:
- Ready-made SaaS APIs: Microsoft Teams, Slack, Sendgrid, Twilio, Google Sheets, etc. These are the connections to third-party operational business utilities and applications.
- Connecting to databases: Many companies require secure connections with custom internal databases or legacy internal MySQL databases.
- Internal custom software: These are private or partner APIs. They may be new API-first microservices or custom-built legacy internal apps. Such middleware may expose many APIs.
If a low-code application wants to become a holistic software development add-on, it must anticipate all potential environments. This includes integration realities for various scenarios.

Citizen Developer vs. “Non-Tech”

So who, exactly, benefits from more accessible integrations? The term citizen developer is often used to refer to any non-professional software developer with minimal programming training. “When most people speak of citizen developers, they mean functional guys that can build tech,” says Kharade.

As I’ve said previously, fostering a culture of citizen developers is becoming a bigger priority amid dwindling developer talent and a combination of other forces impacting software development requirements.

Yet, citizen developer tends to means something a bit different to everyone involved in the low-code space. Kharade seems to prefer the term “non-tech.” Non-tech users may include designers who may not have a software background but the relevant UX/UI knowledge to assemble workflows. “Design is a big part of any application,” said Kharade.

Masking the Complexity of APIs

If low-code tools mask complexity and make APIs more accessible for these non-engineers, it could inspire many creative solutions. With low-code, “creativity is limitless, and integrations really help with that,” said Kharade. “Once they see that power, they aren’t going back again.”

For example, if an internal application requires chat functionality, Slack could be a great addition. Low-code layers could hide complexity in the backend, to the point that it “doesn’t feel like a request in background,” noted Kharade.

The solution works both ways. Utilizing low-code platforms to manage data and expose APIs could enhance visibility and extensibility. Kharade described an industrial manufacturing use case, in which shift workers manually entered machine operations data on paper. That was before COVID; once lockdowns were mandated, the company started digitizing this record-keeping process.

Access to real-time data, and the ability to filter and organize historical data, is already beneficial. “Six months down the line, they may consider how to make this data accessible using APIs,” said Kharade. “The journey has just started — it will only get smarter and better.”

Trigger-Based Workarounds Were A Start

Of course, tools like IFTTT and Zapier have already been making APIs accessible to laymen for years. These platforms use friendly, UI-based front ends over the foundation of complex integrations, allowing users to set up trigger-based automation. If this particular service does this, this other service should do that.

These are cool tools for stitching together service-service communications. However, these workflows are a bit isolated from the larger application development picture. For example, an application for hiring employees may require more than connecting a form API’s input to a Google Sheets field. This could require a custom database, a way to upload documents and the ability to deploy an application to the cloud.

Since low-code already has standard components for drag-and-drop, adding a common method to insert third-party API integrations feels like a natural feature enhancement for these platforms.

Making Integration More Accessible

ProgrammableWeb records 23,000 APIs as of this moment. Clearly, many innovative, programmable SaaS offerings are ripe for the picking. Some paid, some open, all with slightly different integrations.

“It’s difficult for a non-tech user to register and interact with an API,” said Kharade. Figuring out authentication, OAuth, headers, payloads and responses requires expertise. Though a professional developer may be required to “register them once,” says Kharade, once third party integrations are set up, they “should be drag-and-drop and click-to-use.”

Solving integration problems is just one of the many arenas where low-code platforms could shine. If platforms can successfully establish (and maintain) connectivity, consumers could more easily access the core logic they are searching for. Democratizing robust solutions for traditionally non-tech companies is especially important amid the COVID-19 crisis.

To be clear, I don’t believe it’s the API provider’s job to cater to end-users. Instead, they should focus on creating excellent developer experiences. Naturally, the type of business application you are trying to construct and your access to software engineering talent will, to an extent, determine a project’s technical stack. The JAMstack style, for example, may be a better fit for your team’s makeup and project objectives.

That said, there seems to be room in the market for additional low-code layers to open up integration. In the same way APIs avoid reinventing the wheel for specialized utilities, low-code layers could standardize the pains of integration itself.
January 8, 2021
Up Your DevOps Game: It’s Time for NoOps

NoOps is here and it’s more than just a buzzword or an ideal. The next generation of platform-as-a-service (PaaS) platforms are evolving to minimize the developers’ operational burden and reduce dependency on DevOps for deployment. Dev teams that don’t want to deal with operations or don’t have in-house operations resources should consider deploying applications on a NoOps platform.

To understand the concept of NoOps, we need to start with an understanding of how deployment management has evolved over the decades.

From Hardware and Software and Back Again

It’s been a long trend of back and forth between developers and “deployers.”

It was once mandatory for software developers to be fluent in the hardware for which they were creating software. They wrote the code and then worked with the operations team to deploy it on in-house servers. Everything was tightly coupled. The first mainframes—IBMs and SiliconGraphics machines—ran on custom-built software, and the developers were responsible for the deployment and management. The developers had the machine first, and then had to create the code to make them run—assembly or low-level language or even hardware code; rope memory, in some cases.

Then came the x86 revolution, when hardware became more standardized and was decoupled from the complexities of deployment. Developers started focusing on the software and organizations had separate teams that would manage the deployments.

With the advent of virtualization and infrastructure as a service (IaaS), the deployment of software now depended on APIs for infrastructure provisioning, and we returned to an integrated development and deployment function—in other words, DevOps.

The Problems DevOps Created

The problem then became one of choice: As APIs multiplied, developers had to decide which APIs would be most relevant, efficient and useful to deploy their software—and on what infrastructure: bare metal, virtual machines such as EC2 and VMWare, Kubernetes, Swan, OpenShift, serverless, Lambda, Knative, etc.

Not only did the teams have to decide on what IaaS to deploy the actual software, but they needed to also choose how and where the layers and logs would be monitored—and even where those logs would be stored. They need to consider things such as traceability and horizontal or vertical scaling issues, to name a few.

This has resulted in the creation of bespoke permutations and combinations that work great … until vendors’ upgrades require them to keep up with tens or hundreds of configuration changes. Most teams are keeping it together, but it definitely can be done more efficiently.

Now It’s time to Up the Game to NoOps

It’s time for the next approach: Limit the number of choices to create standard best-in-class operations that deliver economies of scale and easily evolve with minimal hassle.

NoOps simplifies cloud operations—everyone can do things the same way. NoOps aims to “completely automate the deployment, monitoring and management of applications and the infrastructure on which they run,” according to Forrester, which coined the term.

NoOps is about standardizing the approach to deployments and reducing the number of variables, bringing simplicity. At its core, NoOps is focused on automating deployments and executions that are predictable and repeatable.

NoOps & Standardization

The development and increasing adoption of containers are critical to the entire NoOps philosophy. Containers provide the ability to independently deploy services and applications, automating and standardizing the process to deploy anything, anywhere. Using containers delivers the tremendous portability that hasn’t been seen since the development of generic hardware.

With encapsulation within the container, whatever is running inside will behave the same no matter where it is deployed.

The NoOps-containers movement will transform the entire DevOps industry.

Let’s go back even further. In the 1800s, few homes had electricity. They hooked up whatever appliance they had to whatever generator they were running and kept their fingers crossed. Once governments took over the role of bringing electricity to every home with standardized voltages and outlets, the appliance industry took off.

A true NoOps platform will provide a standard “socket” that works for everything. The developer will simply build the app, and it will “plug in” anywhere. With NoOps, developers don’t have to worry about how the application will work, deploy or scale, nor do they have to consider reliability or elasticity. The platform will deliver it automatically.

The “Gift” of Containers

Containers free developers from managing infrastructure and reduce the operational burden associated with building and deploying applications. They also minimize application conflicts among different environments and improve portability and team collaboration.

Containers make application deployment easier than ever before. Continuous integration doesn’t change as part of this process. Adopting containers as part of NoOps simply automates continuous delivery—developers write the code, commit the changes and push it to the container’s remote repository. Based on the Docker file, an image will be built and the containers that run your application will be deployed. Since all deployments are rolling, no downtime occurs.

Leveraging containers provides speed, agility and flexibility to any infrastructure, thus bringing cost savings and dynamism. Containers can flexibly host microservices, which can be scaled individually, as necessary. Using CPU, memory or even custom business rules, developers can set auto-scaling policies so applications are ready to serve an increased number of requests whenever needed. As the platform monitors application performance, it can use these insights to intelligently architect a right-sized infrastructure.

Putting NoOps Into Play

If you’re considering adopting NoOps, look for a PaaS provider with the expertise to make the right platform choices for you based on your application development language of choice. For example, if you are looking to host a Ruby application, ensure that the provider has the requisite Ruby expertise.

A true NoOps platform will streamline deployment, automatically scale based on your business requirements and provide outstanding performance. The automation dramatically boosts productivity and reduces costs associated with deploying and managing applications.

NoOps platforms monitor operations and automatically resolve issues using built-in observability mechanisms and intelligent alerts. Centralized logging, metrics and traceability make it easy to identify issues and initiate fixes without expensive downtime. Moreover, the platform should ensure strong security boundaries and adhere to applicable compliance regulations.

When “going NoOps,” also make sure that the solution provides comprehensive documentation and 24×7 support for emergencies that would normally be handled by an in-house DevOps team.

Wrapping It Up

NoOps can eliminate much of the work associated with deploying and monitoring applications by simplifying and streamlining operations and reducing the need for extensive in-house DevOps support. While it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution, it delivers great value helping companies of all sizes from start-ups to enterprise teams save time and money and better redirect their resources toward high-value activities, creating the best code to deliver the highest quality products.

December 21, 2020
6 Tips to Survive the World’s First Holiday Lockdown Gaming Crunch

‘Tis the season to be jolly … especially if you’re a gamer. The upcoming holiday gaming release schedule is a joy to behold for locked-down, socially distanced or just plain pandemic-fatigued game enthusiasts.

For game studios and game developers, however, holiday releases have an entirely different connotation—the infamous crunch time. While views differ on the evils or benefits of crunch time, there is one thing that the most strident detractors and the most ardent supporters of the development practice can agree on: This holiday season’s crunch is unique.

How the world’s first-ever WFH gaming crunch time will affect actual release schedules, workflow, collaboration and game quality (not to mention coffee consumption) remains to be seen. To better prepare for the challenges of WFH crunch, here are six tips we’ve gathered from our gaming partners:

Gaming Developer Tips

Don’t pretend it’s business as usual, but don’t reinvent the wheel

Developers (like everyone else) are most comfortable with what they know. So, while it’s crucial to adapt your development process and workflow to WFH, you don’t need to re-create them.

To modify processes, put together a multidisciplinary team of your top people in each department. Bring them together (in person, if at all possible) for a short yet intensive meetup and let them brainstorm possible WFH scenarios and create a detailed playbook.

This revised playbook should focus primarily on changing only what needs to be changed for remote working while keeping everything that already works intact. It should also include a comprehensive list of experts to be contacted for each scenario or question. And if a developer encounters a scenario for which there is no process, the playbook should help him/her identify the right team to notify.

Once the revised playbook has been established, disseminate it to everyone then follow it religiously. Instruct employees to follow process, even if they feel that doing so may cause minor delays. Shortcuts are not the right move for WFH—it’s too easy to get confused.

Create working groups (and avoid email like the plague)

Email is a notoriously inefficient and confusing collaboration tool in the best of times. Late responses, missed messages in the thread … these and similar email issues can easily translate into WFH chaos.

Instead of email, adopt a collaboration tool and strictly enforce its use. This enforcement is crucial, because the most powerful tool is useless if not used.

Then, create multiple 10-person “smart work” groups with well-defined scopes and a domain-expert moderator to lead the discussion in each. Task these teams with addressing, discussing and solving companywide issues in their relevant arena.

A list of domain-expert moderators should be shared with employees along with instructions on how to contact each moderator when unanticipated scenarios arise.

Do VPN smart

WFH employees frequently face VPN hardships such as low response times. Any latency is a nightmare when working remotely, and this can be compounded by low-speed home network connections.

Aside from upgrading internet infrastructure (for employees at home, too) and using cloud-enabled DevOps tools (instead of on-prem solutions), implement companywide network traffic protocols to ensure smoother and more predictable VPN connection speeds.

For example, instruct employees to avoid uploading large chunks of data through the office VPN at peak times. Instead, split these into reasonable-size chunks or schedule large commits during low-traffic hours such as lunchtime or at night. To ensure the success of this method, continuously monitor network traffic and alert employees that inadvertently violate traffic policies.

… Or don’t use VPN at all

Alternatively, you could trade your VPN for another acronym – FTP. When multiple teams working on multiple projects need to share artifacts, instead of uploading them through the overloaded office VPN, have them use a shared, secured FTP outside your network VPN. And consider using Steamworks or a similar solution to share testable artifacts.

And there’s another brilliant solution you can choose, beyond VPN and FTP. The Google Stadia game streaming platform (for which many games are developed, anyhow) allows frequent uploads of private game builds. This enables developers to quickly see changes made throughout development in a live runtime environment. This little-known trait can save a massive amount of time and (especially) VPN bandwidth when working from home.

Automate what you can

When time loss is compounded by the inherent disconnect of WFH, any time savings are that much more valuable. Automation is well-known to save time and effort in office-based development, but in WFH its contribution can be mission-critical. As a rule, in WFH anything that can be reasonably automated should be automated.

For example, try automating uploads to different storage locations (Steamworks, FTP, etc.). Then, you can integrate this upload as part of your build process—effectively automating the process. Allow each developer to choose in advance whether the build should be uploaded automatically, and enable email notifications when the upload is complete. This little time-saver (and others like it), multiplied by multiple development teams and multiple developers, can really add up.

Try to avoid software updates

In the office, when a little Windows software update goes wrong (which is not infrequent), it’s an annoyance. But in WFH, when no one is in the office to restart the affected machines, it can easily cascade into a serious productivity crisis.

Try to avoid any unnecessary software upgrades or changes so as to not jeopardize your stable environment. If you must update, make sure that someone is in the office to manage unexpected issues.

The Bottom Line

WFH is going to be the new normal, and development processes need to evolve accordingly. Crunch time is the time when processes are pushed to their limits, even in the best of times. By taking the time to ensure that the wheels are as greased as they can be, gaming companies can eliminate workflow and collaboration friction points. The end result—aside from on-time deliveries of high-quality versions—is developers who are happier, more productive and even a little bit jolly.

December 18, 2020
Antipatterns That Hurt DevOps Implementations
Avoiding these DevOps antipatterns can help organizations reap the benefits of implementations faster

It’s a given that all organizations at some point will suffer from poor development practices when trying to find the perfect balance between software development and IT operations. The good news, however, is that implementing DevOps can help you improve these processes and get them synchronized and working together in harmony.

However, understanding and mapping out the core issues and the common DevOps “antipatterns” that are holding you back from successful DevOps implementation is essential. This article will focus on the most common DevOps antipatterns that organizations tend to fall into and how to avoid or overcome them.

What Are DevOps Antipatterns?

At first glance, DevOps may sound like a pretty straightforward concept. At its core, DevOps is about bringing together separate but functional areas and bridges the gap between software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) with the ultimate goal of delivering software faster and with better stability.

That said, DevOps antipatterns can best be defined as ideas that are counterproductive to the DevOps culture. They include:
- Blame culture: In this kind of culture, blaming and punishing people is the norm when mistakes are done. It can happen at an individual or organizational level.
- Root cause analysis (RCA): RCA is a process that involves identifying the “root” cause of a problem or an event, as well as the appropriate actions to take to avoid a recurrence. It’s an iterative and continuous process that must be performed until data is exhausted or all organizational factors have been identified.
- Human error: Human error is often cited as a root cause in RCA. This is also common in “blame culture” and someone has to be held accountable for mishaps and mistakes.
- Silos: An organizational or departmental silo defines the mentality of teams that don’t share their knowledge with other teams within the same company.
4 DevOps Antipatterns and How to Break Them

Wrong Perception of Your DevOps Team

The perception you have of your DevOps team matters. It’s essential to consider the team as part of the entire process. Neglecting to provide them with structure, resources, and a positive working environment can increase your chances of DevOps failing. Furthermore, making DevOps teams more productive requires proper implementation of processes and tools.

How to Break It

A successful DevOps implementation requires more than just bringing people together. Structuring the team correctly and adding processes is vital if they are to succeed. Providing the necessary resources, technology and information security they need will get the best results.

Practices such as continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) are both concerted processes that can be used to bring development teams together in alignment so software products are delivered quickly, operations are more simple to manage and no downtime is present during deployments that are detectable to the end user.

Poor Choice of Technology

Technology plays a significant role in IT; however, the rapid development of new technologies has made it challenging to separate essential and overhyped tech trends. For instance, DevOps itself is a powerful digital transformation tool as it plays a critical role in new software development and problem-solving. Nevertheless, many of the latest IT trends should not be worth your attention unless you and your team are willing to implement it correctly.

How to Break It

This antipattern can be broken by top-level and project managers who make the decisions regarding technology choices. Asking questions such as, “What does the organization need?” or, “How well will this technology work for us?” will help when choosing what tech is right for your organization. With thousands of tools and technologies available, you need such a mindset to make the right decisions.

Unclear Responsibilities in Teams

You may have come across this problem in many other non-IT projects. However, in both IT and DevOps teams, the consequences can be severe if solutions aren’t implemented quickly. If team members aren’t clear on their roles and responsibilities, this can lead to poor decision-making and unnecessary interference in other people’s positions.

How to Break It

First of all, you need to clearly define roles and responsibilities for everyone in the team. A clear definition of roles boosts productivity. For example, having a data scientist in your DevOps team can play a huge role in business success due to their very specific data analytics skills, techniques and tools. In fact, 89% of business managers agree that hiring a data professional will help to improve success at their respective organizations. There just needs to be active and consistent communication between team members for everyone to conduct their own roles and responsibilities efficiently.

Every team member should follow the strategies and plans in place so timelines can be monitored and effective top management decisions can be made. When implementing complex DevOps architectures that require teams and software to work together, poor decision-making will be an issue if roles are left unassigned.

Wrong or No Code Deployment

To put it bluntly, there’s no DevOps without code deployment. With this being the ultimate result, DevOps makes no sense if it fails. This is quite a challenge for several organizations, as having Dev and Ops teams working in harmony can seem impossible.

How to Break It

As mentioned above, code deployment is often a challenging task for DevOps teams. However, organizations can break the resultant antipattern by integrating the units correctly to enable a collaborative environment, a great strategy for successful DevOps implementation.

Such an environment will also make code deployment easier by reducing the need for a series of meetings and reviews, which ultimately delay teams from getting code to deployment.

NoSQL’s Key Role in Database DevOps

DevOps processes need to work in a synchronized manner to be successful. Issues with the database can cause it to slow down and affect the delivery of database changes. However, NoSQL’s unique approach is designed to simplify the process of DevOps implementation in the following ways:

Faster scalability

Many small companies fail to maintain peak performance with greater workloads. A more significant workload calls for better tools that can help maintain peak performance, subsequently making it easier for organizations to scale out.

More efficient technical support

Having technical support that doesn’t hold you back is key to DevOps success. The right NoSQL solution enables you to solve problems before they become full-fledged, expensive and time-consuming.

Faster adaptability

The changes that new codes bring for databases can be challenging. NoSQL makes it easier to deliver solutions to client requests, as it organizes them using dynamic indexing. Therefore, it verifies all queries before answering them with the appropriate index.

Platform testing

Testing is one of the critical steps you need to go through before actual implementation. Databases should be flexible enough to allow you to test queries without interfering with the real data. Testing helps to determine how new changes will impact the development process.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many ways to implement DevOps systems in your business to deliver products faster, offer more technical support and automate essential tasks.

All of the requirements we have covered are necessary if a business is to scale and grow. Businesses need to ensure the correct strategies are in place, roles in the company have been clearly defined and common antipatterns have been identified and eliminated.
December 1, 2020