devopsy.kinsta.cloud

Tag: employee

  • Our Infrastructure is Still Expanding

    Our Infrastructure is Still Expanding

    You would think that sooner or later, marketers and early adopters would take a rest, but it seems that if one group slows down for a bit, another picks up. Our infrastructure is expanding in almost every possible way, and this creates more of a burden on every aspect of DevOps, specifically in IT.

    We have more security needs because we have a larger footprint, for example. We have long had APIs, but now we have massive API groups that are used and re-used, and while standard code scanning works with the source, the companies doing “API security” start with security of the interface, not the code. That is slowly changing, but API management is also impacted, and organizations that determined they didn’t need API management because adjacent markets were serving enough of their needs are slowly discovering that with proliferation comes the need to look at API management again.

    I stay up to date on most new technology because, as an industry analyst, what is coming can inform my discussions of what a given technology space looks like today. But even for me—someone who is not spending a huge chunk of my day coding or working on the toolchain or perfecting the new deployment platform—it can be hard to stay abreast of everything. While one of the foundational tenets of DevOps was no specialization and a shared workload, I think everyone now agrees with what a few of us were saying from day one: Some specialized skills are still needed, except in corner cases. But we certainly are sharing workloads more broadly and far more responsive, so DevOps is absolutely a massive success. Site reliability engineering (SRE) extends that success but focuses more on Ops. I’m really not a huge fan. I like that DevOps wanted to merge the processes and make the management of applications more holistic; I don’t think re-dividing it is the best idea out there. Like every title, “SRE” is interpreted pretty broadly. Some roles really involve DevOps (but SRE sounds cooler), and other organizations are just replacing ‘developer’ with DevOps and ‘operations’ with SRE. However, most are using SRE to manage the entire environment in which the app runs.

    Where are we going? Constant change. That’s the answer. I’ve waited for the breather for a couple of decades, but since VMs were popularized, it has been non-stop and will continue to be.

    This means a lot to you, to your viability as an employee, and to hiring. With the glut of people on the market, we’re seeing a resurgence of “must know every tool in our toolchain” type position postings. Of course, you must not, in a world where the combination of languages, frameworks, CI/CD tools, alerting, and monitoring tools would make a great college-level combinatorics equation. You add value by being adaptable. Both to your current employer and to future ones. The key thing you should seek to demonstrate is your ability to pick up and master new technologies when required. Do it on your current job to show worth, and keep a record of it for your next job. I’ve been a hiring manager off and on forever, and when the market is flooded with good candidates, that is the type of differentiator that gets the team’s attention. Do it; make it something worth doing and document that you did it. You won’t regret it.

    A group of us were helping a recent grad figure out what to do with their career a couple weeks ago, and the consensus was “avoid AI until it shakes out.” This is not the first time I’ve heard that advice—it’s not even the first group I was a part of giving that advice. And I agree in the general sense, but certainly in places where it is being implemented by all vendors in the space and it adds value, you do need to be aware of how it works and what you can do with it, and a project is one way to get that knowledge.

    It is still a rolling opportunity, and you are still keeping the lights on. I’ve seen people who worry they’re not doing enough. Any employer worth working for wants you to keep the systems running first, and everything else after—so if you’re doing that, you’re doing enough. Now go beyond. And keep rocking it. This new technology hasn’t implemented itself, and it isn’t self-maintaining (yet) … That’s all you.

  • Last-Mile DevOps: How to Keep Employees Happy

    Last-Mile DevOps: How to Keep Employees Happy

    Chances are that your company is embracing DevOps to make sure you can get fresh, new digital capabilities to your customers ASAP. That’s because in today’s market, you either have to be first—or quickly close any gaps between you and your more digitally innovative competitors.

    But when it comes to getting new capabilities into the hands of your own employees, things probably move much slower. That’s because your internally facing apps have to clear a hurdle that your customer-facing apps don’t: administration of access privileges that often are poorly defined and inadequately automated.

    That’s a problem. People can’t be productive if they don’t have access rights for the IT resources they need, when they need them. The growing Millennial workforce is going to be especially unhappy if IT is slow to meet their digital needs. And from a security perspective, slow administration of access privileges is also a problem—because your company must be able to automatically and immediately revoke employee access privileges the moment they’re fired or they quit.

    This automated, accelerated management of internal users’ access rights is the missing “last mile” for DevOps. And it’s something you have to address if you’re going to fulfill the needs of the business with the same excellence as you fulfill the expectations of your customers.

    What Makes the Last Mile So Tough?

    If you bank with Chase or ride with Uber, your access to your personal data is gated by your personal login. But, as a customer, you essentially use the same app as everyone else.

    Application privileges within your own company are entirely different for two reasons:

    • Privileges for your internal workforce are much more complex than for customers. Salespeople have sales apps. Your finance department uses finance systems. Your service reps may be allowed to see RMA numbers, but not SSNs. So you must quickly give each person access to only the resources appropriate to their specific role and responsibilities—or risk consequences that include lost productivity, security breaches, compliance failures and excess software licensing costs.
    • Management of internal privileges is an ongoing activity. Productivity, security and compliance demand that you provision each user account for each application with the right privileges at the right time. Privileges must be immediately and appropriately modified every time an employee is promoted or transferred. Privileges must be terminated immediately when someone leaves your company. Privileges may also have to be temporarily modified in real time due to session context—such as use of non-secure public WiFi or an access attempt from a questionable location or at a questionable time.

    Simply put, for internally facing apps, getting code onto a production server isn’t enough. You also need to automate and accelerate management of the “last mile” between servers and employees.

    What Are ‘Last-Mile’ DevOps Requirements?

    DevOps toolchains automate and monitor the software life cycle from design and development through testing and deployment on a production server. What’s missing is automated provisioning and governance of the “last mile” between the server and the individual worker.

    These tasks include:

    • Capture of current user role/responsibility profiles from HR
    • Provisioning of application-specific accounts with profile-appropriate privileges and controls
    • Self-service inputs from authorized LOB managers
    • Detection of session context (network connection, time of day, location, etc.)
    • Real-time modification of privileges based on that session context
    • Automated revocation of access privileges upon termination, transfer, etc.
    • Employee self-service for permitted optional applications and services
    • Monitoring and reporting on employee account activities and events

    Your team probably performs many of these “last mile” tasks manually. Some may also be automated using homegrown scripts. Excessive dependency on scripts is a bad practice, though. Scripts usually are poorly understood by anyone but the original writer—which makes them difficult to maintain and update over time. They also don’t typically integrate well with DevOps, HR systems or other key pieces of the app delivery puzzle. This lack of integration slows your processes down and opens the door for human error.

    Automation of last-mile DevOps makes much more sense. Automation speeds processes, reduces cost and optimizes accuracy. Integrated automation also gives you a dependable, centralized point-of-control for defining and editing policies—as well as for capturing the event logs necessary for compliance and security reporting. The right automation solution will also integrate with the rest of your operations environment (including directories, VDI, and mobile management tools) to ensure secure, reliable application access.

    Why is ‘Last-Mile’ DevOps Important?

    Most business leaders already understand why rapid rollout of customer-facing applications is so important. Unfortunately, many fail to recognize the importance of being just as fast and accurate when it comes to supporting their own workforce.

    The truth, however, is that automation of last-mile DevOps benefits your business in several important ways:

    • Improved employee productivity and engagement. Your workforce will be much more productive and more engaged when everyone has immediate access to the digital tools they need. That improved employee performance will benefit your customers as well.
    • Higher IT efficiency. The sooner you automate the many everyday service provisioning tasks that your skilled IT staff now performs manually, the sooner they can to shift their precious time and energy from routine work to higher-value projects.
    • Enhanced security and compliance. Well-defined access policies, diligent enforcement of those policies with rules-based automation and centralized logging of access provisioning activities all reduce your IT-related risks—as does immediate, automatic and complete revocation of all access privileges the moment any employee or contractor is terminated.
    • Reduced “Shadow IT.” When IT is more responsive to people’s needs, they are far less inclined to turn to alternative digital resources that aren’t properly monitored, governed or secured.
    • Greater business agility. M&A, reorgs and other organizational moves are chronically bottlenecked by manual execution of mass changes to the workforce’s digital access privileges. Rules-based automation of last-mile DevOps eliminates this agility-killing process friction.

    The bottom line: To achieve true digital agility, your company must automate the “last-mile” tasks that give your people access to the IT resources they need—when they need them.

    About the Author / Stacy Leidwinger

    stacy-leidwingerStacy is the VP of Products at RES where she is responsible for defining overall product direction, roadmap and positioning, to drive product excellence, company growth and customer success in the areas of end user computing and security. Her background is in both product marketing and product management helping to positioning B2B software companies for growth and market leadership. Prior to RES, Stacy led the product management team at Directworks, a cloud-based sourcing and supplier management solution. Before Directworks, she managed the roadmap, product positioning, and go-to-market strategy for Vivisimo, an enterprise search solution, which was acquired by IBM. While at IBM, Stacy was responsible for the integration of Vivisimo’s product line into IBM’s big data portfolio. Connect with her on LinkedIn / Twitter.