devopsy.kinsta.cloud

Tag: devops

  • Jelastic Partners with Tech Equity to Deliver an Advanced DevOps Platform for Cloud Applications

    Jelastic Cloud Union expands with Tech Equity, offering a turnkey cloud platform for easy application lifecycle development and management

    Palo Alto, Calif (PRWEB) February 16, 2016

    Jelastic, Inc., a well-recognized leader in cloud orchestration and DevOps announced a strategic partnership with Tech Equity, presenting the ultimate, cost-effective cloud hosting platform for applications.

    Jelastic enables DevOps teams to develop and run their applications and gain full benefits from resource autoscaling, providing cost optimization at the same time. Users can focus on their core tasks, not caring about maintenance and management issues. Jelastic platform supports a wide choice of software stacks by default, Docker containers, plugins for NetBeans IDEs, Eclipse and other technologies, providing a turnkey cloud with a complex solution. Jelastics highly advanced user-friendly platform simplifies greatly applications development and provides truly flexible pricing due to its pay-as-you-go feature.

    “More and more companies worldwide are showing a high interest in containers and DevOps integration to their businesses. To meet these demands, we keep expanding Jelastic Cloud Union and now partner with Tech Equity.” said Ruslan Synytsky, Jelastic CEO.

    Tech Equity currently offers two cloud domains. The entry level Tech Equity DevOps cloud provides an opportunity to develop, test and integrate the applications with out-of-the-box transaction processing capabilities.Dr Linus Etube, Tech Equity’s Director of Financial Technology and former Chief Investment Officer in the City of London led the design of the Swifin transaction exchange that enables any ISV and any developer to integrate their applications with Swifin, providing the opportunity for instant access to new customers and revenue opportunities for ISVs and developers.

    “Through our partnership with Jelastic, we are able to deliver an advanced enterprise cloud platform with integrated transaction processing capabilities that enabled rapid adoption of cloud services by a wide range of users, including those without access to bank accounts and credit cards,” commented Dr Shiyghan Emmanuel Navti, Tech Equity’s founder, a technology industry veteran who previously led the IBM Europe private cloud platform technical sales team, as well as the developing key elements of the IBM’s African expansion strategy.

    Dr. Linus Etube who is also the Founder of Sedel Capital LLP, which has recently obtained regulatory approval from the UK Financial conduct authority for eMoney issuance and the provision of related payment services commented that the flexibility offered by the Jelastic cloud platform makes it possible to use cloud technology and the Swifin transaction service exchange to ensure secure delivery of Financial Services to millions of people including the unbanked in a way that makes it possible for any person or any business to access and pay for cloud technology services from anywhere using any mobile phone or network. This will open up opportunities for greater participative engagement by all in the real economy and for increased use of technology to refine and optimise key business processes for many businesses to support greater wealth creation.

    Commenting on the launch of the Tech Equity cloud, CEO of the Natural Enterprises Finance and Marketing Agency Ltd, Callistus Mubangizi stated that the flexibility and efficiency of the Swifin cloud platform create unprecedented opportunities to deliver a range of services to its network of over 900 loans and savings communities across Uganda.

    Tech Equity selected Jelastic as a partner due to its ability to address key requirements from ISVs, DevOps teams, enterprises and financial services organizations migrating to the cloud. Jelastic provides a production-ready solution with a package of benefits like advanced Docker containers support, smart distribution, automatic vertical and horizontal scaling, high availability, security and full isolation. The partnership with Jelastic enables Tech Equity to support the most popular programming languages – PHP, Java, Python, Ruby and Node.js.

    About Tech Equity

    Tech Equity is a managed cloud platform services provider focused on enabling application developers and service providers to access new revenue opportunities by serving clients who previously were unable to pay for their services. The Tech Equity cloud has been designed in partnership with Jelastic, and with the support of Microsoft and IBM. Tech Equity enables ISVs and cloud application developers to grow their customers base and generate more revenue through the use of an efficient application hosting platform, integrated with transaction processing services. Tech Equity is based at Europe’s largest FinTech accelerator in London, UK. For more information about Tech Equity, visit http://techequity.company. For information on the Swifin financial services, visit http://swifin.com.

    About Jelastic

    Jelastic delivers an advanced enterprise Public, Private, Hybrid and Multi-Cloud platforms in partnership with ISVs, hosting service providers, systems integrators, outsourcing companies. The Jelastic cloud platform provides certified containers for Java, PHP, Ruby, Node.js, Python and .NET and the ability to use custom Docker containers. Jelastic offers an agile deployment model with no proprietary APIs, flexible automatic scaling for stateless and stateful applications, collaboration, access control, monitoring, backup and disaster recovery, built-in billing and business analytics tools. Jelastic enables its partners to drive down TCO with high density, hardware utilization. Its multi-cloud functionality enables customers to achieve high-availability through geo-distribution across different data centers or clouds. For more information visit us at http://www.jelastic.com

    For the original version on PRWeb visit:http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/02/prweb13215755.htm

  • Relus Cloud Expands East Coast Footprint with Senior Solutions Architect Hire

    Ferzan Rizvi brings strategic expertise in Continuous Delivery, DevOps, and Amazon Web Services.

    Atlanta, GA (PRWEB) February 16, 2016

    Relus Cloud, a leading cloud solutions provider in Atlanta, announced today that it will expand the organization’s footprint into the New York and Pennsylvania markets with the addition of a new Senior Solutions Architect, Ferzan Rizvi. The expansion and Rizvi’s role will assist Relus in providing robust solutions in Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Continuous Delivery (CD) to organizations of all types. Rizvi brings a wealth of experience in AWS, architecture, development, and agile methodologies.

    “This exciting expansion will allow us to better serve organizations throughout our East Coast markets,” said Michael Campbell, Vice President of Sales at Relus Technologies. “Ferzan’s vast knowledge of AWS, Continuous Delivery, and DevOps will allow Relus to provide even greater expertise to organizations making cloud transitions or optimizing existing cloud environments.”

    Ferzan brings the organization over ten years in Continuous Delivery, DevOps and software engineering. Before joining Relus, Ferzan worked at Scripps Networks Interactive, Siemens, and eBay Enterprise. In previous roles, Rizvi was responsible for managing Continuous Delivery teams, solving challenging technical problems, and ensuring compliance with Federal and industry regulatory requirements.

    As Senior Solutions Architect, Rizvi will work closely with customers to deliver innovative cloud solutions and architecture. He will also support clients in developing cloud strategies and initiatives that align with the overall goals and objectives of the organization. “My goal is to bring the highest subject matter expertise to Relus clients,” said Rizvi. “I am excited to solve complex technical challenges and deliver quality results to Relus Cloud customers.”

    About Relus Cloud

    Relus Cloud is an Amazon Web Services Advanced Consulting Partner based in Atlanta, GA. Our core competencies include Cloud Strategy & Planning, Cloud Architecture & Design, DevOps Consulting, Managed Services, and Big Data Consulting. Our expertise and capabilities in cloud technologies positions us as a true business partner to the most profitable and impactful organizations around the country. Our experienced team develops tailored solutions aimed at minimizing costs, maximizing investment, building compliance, and simplifying the cloud technology environment. For more information, visit http://www.reluscloud.com.

    For the original version on PRWeb visit:http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/02/prweb13217141.htm

  • TechWell Announces Agile Dev, Better Software & DevOps West in Las Vegas

    Over One Hundred Learning and Networking Sessions To Be Held Over Six Days

    Jacksonville, FL (PRWEB) February 15, 2016

    Agile Dev, Better Software & DevOps West will be held June 5–10, 2016, in Las Vegas, Nevada at the iconic Caesars Palace. The conference offers access to more than one hundred learning and networking sessions over six days, details of which are now available to view online.

    “We are excited to announce the full 2016 Agile Dev, Better Software and DevOps West schedule. This year’s event offers speakers from companies including Spotify, Whole Foods, ThoughtWorks, Autodesk, DirectTV, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Agile Institute, and others.”, said Stasi Richmond, Director of Marketing for TechWell.

    At Agile Dev West, discover the latest in agile methods, technologies, tools, and leadership principles. Better Software West explores what is needed to build better software now; and, at DevOps West, learn from industry experts how your organization can apply DevOps concepts to improve deployment frequency and time to market, reduce lead time, and more successfully deliver stable new features.

    This year’s keynotes presentation lineup will feature industry experts like Jez Humble on DevOps and the Culture of High-Performing Software Organizations and Linda Rising on The Power of an Agile Mindset—plus other internationally-known speakers. Concurrent sessions offer attendees the flexibility to customize their learning experience by following a specific track or explore various track topics throughout the week. Session Tracks include, but are not limited to:

    ● Agile Leadership

    ● Agile Techniques

    ● DevOps

    ● Going Mobile

    ● Internet of Things (IoT)

    ● Projects & Teams

    ● Software Quality

    ● Test & QA

    Finally, attendees can take part in the Agile Leadership Summit at Agile Dev West. Participants in the Agile Leadership Summit work with and learn from experienced agile leaders that have led lasting change and produced a thriving agile culture. Learn ways to challenge personal leadership growth and lead in your organizational challenges including communication interpretation, anti-fragile approaches, visual data information radiators, and more.

    For more information and to access the full conference program, visit https://bscwest.techwell.com.

    About TechWell Corporation:

    TechWell—through its conferences, training, consulting, community websites, and online resources—helps people and organizations develop and deliver great software. For more information, visithttp://www.techwell.com.

    ###

    For the original version on PRWeb visit:http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/02/prweb13217021.htm

  • Perforce Adds Emerasoft to Its Global Channel Program

    Partnership Helps Companies in Italy Adopt DevOps Practices and Bring Products to Market Faster

    Wokingham (UK) and Rome, (Italy), February 16, 2016 – Perforce Software today announced a partnership with Emerasoft, the leading distributor of application lifecycle management (ALM) solutions and consulting services in Italy. The agreement allows Emerasoft to sell and support thePerforce Helix version control and collaboration platform as part of its extensive product portfolio.

    Based in Turin, Italy, Emerasoft has been providing products and services that enable agile development, continuous delivery and DevOps for more than 10 years.

    “The advanced capabilities of Perforce Helix are exactly what our customers have been asking for—a collaborative version control solution that also meets enterprise needs for scalability and security,” said Riccardo Bernasconi, CEO at Emerasoft. “We are particularly impressed with Helix GitSwarm and its ability to provide Git users with a much more comprehensive Git experience while making Git enterprise-ready. This makes Helix an incredibly strong addition to our product mix.”

    Emerasoft joins a growing community of Perforce sales partners across Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific, Africa, India and the Americas.

    “We are excited to add a partner of Emerasoft’s caliber to our expanding partner ecosystem,” said Philip O’Hara, EMEA partner manager at Perforce Software. “Emerasoft’s track record of creating solutions for complex environments and their strong understanding of the Italian application development market makes them the perfect partner to expand our footprint to new geographies.”

    ###

    About Emerasoft
    Emerasoft is an Italian company providing IT products and services. Founded in 2005 Emerasoft provides products and services in the areas of Application Lifecycle Management, Software Testing, DevOps, Security, Business Intelligence and Process Discovery. Its mission is to develop, select, and integrate the best technologies for customer satisfaction. Emerasoft has expertise in the Automotive, Telecommunication, Manufacturing, Bank and Insurance industry sectors, serving innovative customers, including Ferrero, CNH Industrial, Lombardia Informatica, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Finmeccanica, Ferragamo, Juventus. For more information, please visitwww.emerasoft.com.

    About Perforce Software
    Perforce Software helps companies build complex products more collaboratively and securely. Its highly scalable source code management (SCM) and collaboration platform, Perforce Helix, enables global teams to collaborate on any type or size of file. It supports both centralized and distributed (DVCS) workflows while safeguarding intellectual property with advanced behavioral analytics. Perforce is trusted by the world’s most innovative brands, including adidas, Samsung, NVIDIA, Intuit, Pixar, Salesforce, EA, Ubisoft and VMware. The company is headquartered in Alameda, California, with offices in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, and sales partners around the globe. For more information, please visit www.perforce.com.

    Media Contacts

    Global
    Ivana Gaspic
    Perforce Software
    Ph: +1 510-473-3186
    Mob: +1 415-955-7483
    igaspic@perforce.com

    US
    Michael Thomas
    Edelman
    Ph: +1 312-233-1361
    Mob: +1 773-822-6182
    michael.thomas@edelman.com

    UK/EMEA
    Maxine Ambrose/Nicola Males
    Ambrose Communications
    Ph: +44 1491 412944
    perforce@ambrosecomms.co.uk

  • DevOps Brings IT Out of the Shadows

    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.

  • Using DevOps to Avoid Architecting Application Slums

    Using DevOps to Avoid Architecting Application Slums

    The U.K. high-rise tower blocks and built circa 1950-1980 were heralded as architectural wonders—large concrete towers easily housing the same population as the smaller houses they replaced. With large rooms, excellent views and surrounding open spaces, they initially were popular residences—low cost and futuristic.

    But looking futuristically sometimes has a habit of coming back to haunt you.

    Due cost-cutting, substandard materials, demanding deadlines and rushed construction practices, these modern-age housing miracles became the new slums of the day. By replicating tower-blocks across the country, town planners unwittingly replicated bad designs everywhere. The results: undesirable housing and elevated crime levels, leading to slums and urban decay. Even the surrounding open areas were neglected because no one had ownership over maintenance and supervision.

    In IT, we have our own design and architectural calamities.

    There are many similarities between existing IT apps and decrepit old tower blocks. IT monoliths can be hard to scale, requiring costly maintenance to avoid disrepair. They’re also tough to police, with vandalism and theft being a constant problem. Add to this integration issues (IT’s version of unsupervised open spaces and pathways), and we’re left with systems inadequate to meet the needs of modern digital business.

    Enterprise architecture must change with the times

    DevOps, with its focus on operations and development collaboration across the entire service life cycle, is now seen as the answer to some of these problems—an approach underpinned by agile and lean principles for rapidly delivering high quality digital services. That sounds great, but let’s not forget enterprise architecture (EA), because without it we could still be building IT slums—only more of them and much, much faster.

    Of course, many DevOps stalwarts may argue (with some justification) that heavy EA practices and frameworks haven’t evolved to match the pace of agile. Iterative-style development means where you start isn’t necessarily where you finish, necessitating a transition from set-in-stone architectural designs to a fluid mix on continuously evolving decisions. And, if EA can’t adapt, autonomous and self-managed agile teams increasingly are empowered to make architectural calls.

    But great developers aren’t necessarily brilliant architects; they’re not hard-wired that way. It means they could be charging down a development path without architectural guiderails, or tactically making team-based decisions that compromise program-level objectives. For example, the scalability and performance needed to support a business strategy of tripling the customer base and increasing satisfaction scores could get lost because development focuses myopically on delivering more functionality.

    However, we can’t just lay the blame on developers. Enterprise architects must recognize that any misalignment between their processes (especially the rigid and static ones) and the vision of an increasingly software-driven business will only further isolate the practice.

    Architecting new fluid guidelines and principles

    The role of EA in an agile context is still up for debate, but this shouldn’t hold us back. By using architects and fluid guidelines means we can maintain the pace of delivery while preventing chaos. The trick of course is to limit architectural over-engineering while providing developers with a minimum set of EA to avoid technical and architectural debt.

    Even in minimal mode EA can still help developers identify quickly what should be considered during design. The aim is to guide developers into understanding what architectural facets make up a successful application, and more importantly, how new ways of thinking can support longer and more sustainable software innovation.

    Interestingly, these practices can be presented in a “slum avoidance” context:

    • Avoid substandard or unsupported materials – The tool chains being used will probably comprise both commercial and open source software, but beware of anything unsupported. Just as the cost of maintaining tower blocks reached unsustainable levels, so too, will support burden on an organization if software isn’t commercially backed, especially in IT operations. Also, work with development to understand where constraints lead to testing compromises—the “construction shortcuts” syndrome, resulting in more defects and technical debt.
    • Never use new technologies to rehouse old problems – As tower blocks degraded and vandalism increased, many local authorities tried to contain the situation by housing “problem groups” in the same block. But that just increased problems. Enterprise architects can make the same mistakes—for example, laying down crazy edicts that everything must be containerized, even some legacy apps; not understanding that runtime independence only extends the life of problem applications;  or providing no incentive to drive improvements and clear existing legacy IT slums.
    • Monitor and manage your sub-contractors – Whatever cloud model you adopt, abstracting away the infrastructure or application stack frees development to focus on coding. That’s great, but don’t forget “PaaS-ing” apps to the cloud doesn’t mean relinquishing ownership of application performance and the end user experience. To this end, architects must act as cloud-brokerage advisors—for example, working to ensure any cloud service provides open APIs, so that monitoring can be seamlessly incorporated into a unified solution.

    Of course, architecting great new digital services with DevOps is only part of the answer. The innovations of today may become legacies of the future and many new apps must also integrate with existing systems. It’s essential, therefore, that architecture covers both bases: working in minimal mode to ensure fast construction of quality services, but also applying standards and governance when needs dictate and systems change.

    No matter how good your app designs look on paper, bad architecture just means building more problematic systems and never clearing the existing slums.

  • Devops freestyle friday

    Devops freestyle friday

    Following up with yesterday, today marks my favorite day of the work week.  It’s Friday, which means another round of #DevOpsFF (Devops Freestyle Friday).  In order to be considered to win you must create a captivating/funny/intelligent short freestyle/rhyme, in a style of your choosing.  Whether that be a meme or a text tweet to display your creativity  You can use https://imgflip.com/memegenerator as an easy source for generating memes if you would like to submit in that style.

    To submit your entry for a chance to win a t-shirt (top 5 TBT entries receives a t-shirt), simply post it to twitter tweeting @DevOpsDotCom and using the hashtag #DevOpsFF.

    Here’s a quick freestyle to help you:

    Bob is stuck in his old ways, he doesn’t like to continuously deliver. He’ll be rethinking his outdated behavior when he’s sent downriver. #DevOpsFF @DevOpsDotCom

  • Puppet Labs Announces Two New Executive Hires

    Amid 72 Percent Year-over-Year Growth, New Executive Additions Will Drive Continued Ecosystem Growth and Product Innovation

    Portland, OR – February 11, 2016 – Puppet Labs, the leading provider of IT automation software, today announced two new additions to the company’s executive team, coming on the heels of another year of stellar growth while nearing cash-flow profitability. Simon Hayes joins the company as senior vice president of business and corporate development to build upon Puppet Labs’ dynamic partner ecosystem. Jamie Hull joins as vice president of product, and will drive further innovation in Puppet, the world’s most widely used IT automation tool.

    “I’m happy to announce two great additions to our executive team who will accelerate product innovation and drive further growth in our ecosystem during an important time of our growth,” said Luke Kanies, founder and CEO of Puppet Labs. “Jamie and Simon will be fantastic assets to Puppet Labs. Their strong leadership skills will propel Puppet Labs forward as we bring automation and its benefits, from 15 percent penetration, to the entire market.”

    unnamed As the head of business and corporate development, Simon will drive Puppet Labs’ partner strategy and execution. Simon joins Puppet Labs from Citrix where he was vice president of portfolio, strategy and alliances. In that role, Simon built the strategic alliances organization to create and manage partnerships with global technology companies like Cisco, Microsoft, SAP, IBM and Fujitsu, all of which were key to Citrix’s success. During his time at Citrix, he was also responsible for the “Citrix Ready” ecosystem program and the company’s open source development organization, and also led the portfolio strategy team for Citrix’s Enterprise Service Provider Business.

    “Puppet Labs’ leadership in IT automation has been enabled by the most robust partner ecosystem in the industry, and a strong commitment to collaboration and customer success,” said Simon. “I look forward to helping Puppet build its next phase of growth through strategic partnerships and by building a world-class ecosystem.”

    unnamed-1Jamie Hull will lead the Puppet Labs product team. As the former vice president of mobile products at Evernote, Jamie will bring an empirical user-first perspective to how Puppet Labs builds, develops and ships software to its users. At Evernote, Jamie headed up the iOS and Android product teams and led development of the two core mobile platforms, from initial design through development and to deployment. Prior to joining Evernote, Jamie led product and development teams at a mix of consumer product and B2B service companies, including Comcast (Plaxo), UpMo, Blurb and AOL/Advertising.com. She began her career in web development, where she managed engineering, product development and user experience.

    “Puppet Labs has a long history of building products that its users love, and that provide real results for businesses,” said Jamie. “I’m excited to work with Luke and his team to build upon these successes and to shape the future of Puppet for the next decade.”

    Additional Resources:

    About Puppet Labs

    Puppet Labs, Inc. is the leader in IT automation. Puppet Labs software provides system administrators the operational agility, efficiency and insight they need to proactively manage dynamic infrastructure, scaling from tens of servers to thousands, both on premise and in the cloud. Thousands of the world’s leading organizations use Puppet Labs software to configure and manage their IT infrastructure, including Bank of America, Cisco, NYSE, Salesforce.com and WebEx. Based in Portland, Oregon, Puppet Labs employs 400 people. The company is backed by investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Google Ventures, VMware, Cisco, True Ventures and Radar Partners. To learn more, please visit PuppetLabs.com.

  • Devops throwback thursday

    Devops throwback thursday

    Today marks one of my favorite days of the work week, besides Friday, my favorite of course.  It’s Thursday, which means another round of #DevOpsTBT (Devops Throwback Thursday).  In order to be considered to win you must create a captivating/funny/intelligent throwback thursday entry, in a style of your choosing.  Whether that be a meme or a sentence such as “Remember when….#DevOpsTBT”.  You can use https://imgflip.com/memegenerator as an easy source for generating memes if you would like to submit in that style.

    To submit your entry for a chance to win a t-shirt (top 5 TBT entries receives a t-shirt), simply post it to twitter tweeting @DevOpsDotCom and using the hashtag #DevOpsTBT.

    Here is your only winner from last week (it’s really simple to win a t-shirt, just play along):

    Here are some examples of DevOpsTBT to help get the wheels spinning:

    tbt1 tbt2 tbt3

  • An Inconvenient Truth about DevOps

    An Inconvenient Truth about DevOps

    In a company’s early stage, the focus is on producing features for the customer. When the focus is tangible value, it’s natural for a software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup to fill its ranks solely with application developers. But when should a company invest in development operations, and at what level? If it has enough capital to hire four developers, should one of those four be DevOps?

    Over the last few years we’ve continued to wrestle with this question. The value from an app engineer was so tangible, but DevOps was something else. Though no visible product was created, DevOps produced many accelerants. Incorporating development operations promised to make the other engineers faster, more effective and happier, but we always feared a sacrifice in features. The decision was similar to setting up robust automation testing—the value accrues, but the upfront cost is a hard pill to swallow.

    We did it too late, and learned some interesting things along the way.

    The Benefits/Advantages of DevOps

    The benefits to incorporating development operations early on are many. As an immediate ROI, DevOps will add a lot of agility to your team by allowing your other engineers (and your quality control team) to focus on what they do best: create your product.

    What is interesting is that the role always exists implicitly within your development team, but is more effective when explicit. If added early, this position can accelerate your team. If not added in time, each developer will play the role in part. The biggest difference between the traditional engineering role and DevOps is the context required: It is possible for a DevOps person to not really know the business rules of your system and still add tremendous value. This means anyone skilled in the craft can be put to work, which allows for quicker onboarding.

    To better illustrate this, let me start by explaining deeper the importance of DevOps in a startup (and in companies of all sizes, actually). By implementing DevOps practices you will enable quicker product iterations. This is vital for a startup, as much of the success of a new venture depends on meeting release dates and getting new versions of the product in the hands of your users as quick as possible. Also, configuration management (CM) tools provide an inventory of all your software and configurations as a living documentation. Your infrastructure setup will be more predictable, you’ll have a better understanding of your stack. Centralized logging solutions and performance monitoring tools will enhance your monitoring and alerting. In short, investing in DevOps in the beginning yields valued dividends over time as you scale.

    How DevOps Has Impacted Our Business

    Establishing DevOps deeply improved our release process. We used to release new versions of our product much less frequently, taking  30 to 40 hours per month of a developer’s time. Now we are able to release much more often—at least three times a week. In the past we would barely release three times in the same month! Now it takes just a few seconds of a developer’s time, only requiring the push of a button in our continuous integration/continuous deployment tool (CI/CD) Atlassian Bamboo. Builds are run and the application is deployed continuously to our test environments over the course of a few days. After successful rounds of testing performed by our quality control team, we are then ready to push our new release to the production environment by hitting the little icon named “Deploy.” It is enabling.

    This successful implementation of a CI/CD strategy also added much more transparency to our pipeline. Now everyone can see in a central place all the metadata about a release, including what product version is deployed to which environment, what is being deployed and by whom.

    Another result we achieved directly with DevOps was agility in setting up our cloud infrastructure. In the old days we would have to log in to our cloud provider control panel and manually spin up new instances, waiting long minutes for them to start only so we could then secure shell (SSH) into them and make all the necessary installations and apply the required settings. Now, we can simply a run a script in Ansible (our CM tool) that sets up an entire environment for us. And since it is much cheaper now to provision and configure new infrastructure, we are now able to create an entire new process for testing new epics completely segregated from our main infrastructure. This has greatly improved our development processes, allowing for more flexibility, speed and control when developing and testing new product epics.

    DevOps Excellence

    During the past year, we have come across different DevOps professionals and learned a lot about the good, the bad and the ugly DevOps engineer. More importantly, we’ve learned what makes a great one. Topping the list of attributes is extreme attention to detail. Managing an entire infrastructure isn’t easy; it has a lot of moving parts. Being able to not get lost in the details is essential.

    A great DevOps engineer also possesses strong process orientation and a passion for automation. To be supportive to the engineering team, he or she needs to understand deeply the current engineering processes and think of ways to streamline and automate them. The questions the DevOps engineer should ask include:

    • What is our build process?
    • When do we deploy to QA?
    • How do we notify the Quality Control team that a new version is ready to be tested?

    You need someone who can challenge the enterprise status quo and help to define best practices for developing and deploying systems.

    Finally, as happens with the definition of the word, there is no definitive answer on where a DevOps team or individual fit in the engineering organization of a startup. At our company, the DevOps engineers report to the Enterprise Architect, who reports to the CTO. In other organizations we have seen DevOps engineers report to the Head of Infrastructure (who reports to the CTO), or report to the Head of Infrastructure (who in turn reports to the VP of Engineering).

    It really doesn’t matter where it fits in your company architecture. First, define your company and vision, then define your org chart. Just remember to include a box for your DevOps engineer from the beginning!

    About the Author

    Rafael_NevesRafael Neves, head of Enterprise Architecture at ALICE, has more than 8 years of experience with technology, having worked in the financial industry both in the sell-side and the buy-side for most of his career. Prior to joining ALICE, he served as head of Engineering at investment advisory startup Monetar. Before that, he was the head of IT Quality & Process of Brasil Plural, engaging in prominent projects such as the technological structuring of the bank’s Broker Dealer in New York. In 2010 he became the head of Algorithmic Trading in the first electronic trading desk in Brazil at Agora CTVM, the leading brokerage house in the Brazilian Exchange which he joined in 2008. Rafael earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro.