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Challenging Cloud Migration Myths in the Wake of COVID-19

The COVID-19 push to cloud migration, unfortunately, is riddled with myths. Here are some worth busting

With a substantial increase in the number of businesses now operating from their employees’ homes, and organization leaders realizing that their office buildings are now somewhat unnecessary until a vaccination against the coronavirus is widely distributed, the cloud has played an increasingly important role in IT operations.

For many, migrating to the cloud has had to happen quickly and at a large scale to cope with the increased pressure on IT infrastructure during the pandemic. At such a turbulent and challenging time, it’s never been more important for businesses to ensure they have the correct IT infrastructure in place.

As more businesses of different shapes and sizes begin to use cloud computing technology, the realization that greater flexibility, efficiency and scalability can be achieved is being understood by the majority. However, there are still a significant number of enterprises that have misconceptions about how cloud technology can enhance or replace their current IT environment. The outsourcing of IT infrastructure to a dedicated provider can make it difficult for organizations to understand where and how their operations are running and can become a breeding ground for misunderstanding and myths.

To help clear up some of these myths, I’ve put together a guide to support organizations in the decision-making process and help them understand whether moving to the cloud is the right option for their business.

Myth 1: Companies should hold tight and do nothing in the wake of COVID-19 as moving IT operations to the cloud is too risky

This is absolutely not true. While it might seem scary to overhaul IT operations at such an uncertain time and invest in cloud computing technology, there is no doubt that it will be worth it in the long run. Business leaders and IT directors are understandably apprehensive about buying into a cloud migration platform when their budgets are already strapped and the future of their business is uncertain, however, our own research has proven migrating to the cloud can have significant financial benefits.

Our recent Forrester Consulting TEI (Total Economic Impact) study examined the potential return on investment enterprises may realize by deploying hybrid infrastructure optimization solutions for both the public and private cloud platforms, and found those that have already deployed a cloud migration service have seen a 145% return on investment across a three-year period. Businesses shouldn’t fear that moving into the cloud will have a negative impact to their company economics even though things are difficult in a post-COVID environment, as in fact, deploying a cloud migration strategy will have the opposite result.

Our Current State of Hybrid Cloud and IT report found that companies that decided to halt their cloud migration altogether as a result of the pandemic are 2.5 times more likely to experience detrimental outages that can hurt company KPIs, as opposed to those that have continued their journey to the cloud over the last four months.

Myth 2: Cloud migration has to be a quick, ‘one and done’ process if organizations are to cope with the infrastructure demands that remote working practices create

The term “one and done” cannot be applied when migrating to the cloud. The fact is that cloud migration is a process, and being able to scale up accordingly first requires the right technologies in place. While the pandemic has exacerbated some significant IT challenges across businesses, it has placed a greater focus on ensuring employees can effectively work from home instead of a faster migration to the cloud, which has, understandably, been put on the backburner. For some organizations, remote working has never been part of their practices, but with government guidelines and lockdown restrictions, working side by side has not been an effective way to continue to keep employees safe.

The immediacy of the shift to remote working has meant ensuring operations could continue as a priority focus for businesses. But as we begin to settle into the “new normal” and most employees are now accustomed to working from their home, vision can be turned to a digital transformation process and ensuring the correct technologies are in place for companies to thrive.

Myth 3: Halting your cloud migration during COVID-19 will save you time and money and won’t impact your IT systems’ performance

This is in fact an untrue statement, as businesses that have halted their cloud migration journey because of the pandemic have already experienced significant issues in their IT systems. Our report, which was conducted to better understand how businesses were coping with their migration strategies during the pandemic, has revealed that more than three-quarters (77%) of respondents have reported a lack of access to the correct tools. In addition, 81% of those surveyed have said they have spent more time working across multiple systems to create a single report on IT bandwidth and resources, increasing the amount of time spent on a singular task.

There is no doubt that deciding to halt a cloud migration strategy because of the pandemic will have impacted organizations’ information technology systems. But that’s not to say it’s too late. Businesses can get back on track and ensure the move to the cloud is just as effective in post-COVID operations.

Myth 4: COVID-19 has made system transparency and measuring performance more complicated than ever before, especially when factoring in cloud migration

Measuring performance and system transparency post-COVID can only seem complicated if the appropriate resources aren’t put in place. If businesses and IT decision-makers ensure the correct technologies are readily available and accessible, measuring the performance of a cloud migration strategy should be relatively simple.

Our survey reveals that access to the correct tools and support services has a direct correlation to business cloud performance. More than three-quarters of those who experienced performance issues during the beginning of the pandemic also say they lack sufficient access to tools. However, companies that had already begun (or actually completed) their migration process at the onset of global lockdowns experienced fewer IT outages. In fact, for more than half of businesses, having impacted access to the correct support services has created a significant hurdle to overcome at a time when they’re already trying to cope with a number of challenges. Comparing this to those that maintained good performance, just under half said access to either type was not an issue.

As with most things at the moment, apprehension in investment is unsurprising. For businesses, attempting to get sales, productivity and efficiency back on track is the most critical post-COVID action. But, beginning to understand how a digital transformation and cloud migration strategy should be adopted or continue at this time is crucial for survival.

September 8, 2020
Low-Code: An Oasis During Developer Drought
Key insights from Mendix’s 2020 Developer Drought Index

You may have heard that Silicon Valley is in the midst of a developer drought. But the Valley is not alone; developer talent across the U.S. heartland has dried up. In fact, the top 10 U.S. counties with the highest developer demand per capita aren’t even in California.

A recent report by Mendix identified new hiring hotspots and a changing U.S. map for tech talent. States in the U.S. heartland are actively seeking developer talent, though some are slow to adopt 100% remote work. In the wake of COVID–19, many are reassessing work-life opportunities, leaving densely populated cities to work and live in more rural areas.

I recently had a great discussion with Sheryl Koenigsberg, head of global product marketing at Mendix, to make sense of the “Developer Demand Index” findings. Below we speculate on the future of developer work, and how low-code platforms may be the oasis many talent-thirsty companies seek.

‘Developer Demand Index’ Study

The “Developer Demand Index” sought to identify locations where developer talent is needed the most. The process involved a geographic analysis of 2,000 of July 2020’s job ads for U.S. software developers.

The study found high developer demand and short supply in middle America; South Dakota, Nebraska and Utah were among the top states with the lowest supply to demand.

At a county level, the highest developer demand was in Cumberland County, New Jersey; Minnehaha County, South Dakota; and Pontotoc County, Mississippi.

The study demonstrated how more established tech hubs—Silicon Valley and Austin, for example—have a better balance of talent demand and supply.

“The study confirmed unpopular theories that I had,” said Koenigsberg. “Developer drought is not a Silicon Valley or coastal-only problem; smaller metros throughout the country are experiencing the same problem.”

Conditions for a Drought

Why do states in the nation’s heartland have a developer drought to begin with? I assumed that a lower average salary in middle America would deter developers, but Koenigsberg said the conditions are more complex.

“I don’t necessarily see a correlation between average salary and developer drought,” she said. Rather, new tech hubs continue to form wherever larger enterprises can get tax breaks. Other regional perks could include local government startup incentives or university partnerships.

Tech certainly has a history of revitalizing less dense areas with new hubs. Take Google’s expansion into Austin, Amazon’s takeover of Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood or SpaceX’s remote Starship site in Boca Chica, Texas. Naturally, these areas attract the requisite talent and encourage other companies into the fold as well.

For example, the report speculates South Dakota state could be a new Silicon Prairie hotspot. “A vibrant tech & startup scene, local talent, and the lowest COVID–19 rates are all driving the economic surge in this state,” read the report.

With remote work and social distancing brought on by COVID–19, technology companies are adapting and the urgency to cluster in certain locales may dissipate.

COVID–19 and Remote Work

Software was already eating the world. But with COVID–19, it’s eating physical reality itself.

With COVID–19 forcing many companies 100% online, the need for new software is skyrocketing like never before. Google, Facebook and many others have enacted stay-at-home plans for most of 2021. After the crisis, remote work will be a more permanent reality for many.

While COVID–19 benefited tech, many brick-and-mortar businesses were less prepared. We’re now seeing the frailties of old systems, described Koenigsberg, and the need to replace paper-based or manual operations with digitized versions. Consumer-facing companies that did not vigorously embrace digital transformation before COIVD–19 are now in a tight spot.

Low-Code Waters Fill a Developer Drought

According to Derek Roos, CEO of Mendix, “the ‘Developer Demand Index’ shows that companies need to think differently about how and where to engage skilled tech workers in 2021 and beyond. Traditional development paradigms basically fall apart when you’re dealing with mobile or remote workflows.”

As I covered recently, COVID–19 is only one of many factors spurring a low-code revolution. By utilizing visual-based models, “citizen developers” can construct applications. This enables a business analyst, for example, to string together an internal application without jumping through the traditional IT hoops. Koenigsberg identifies other low-code benefits:
- Hire Local: If tools are less impenetrable, companies can retrain local employees, helping recover the developer gap and negating the need to hire externally.
- Collaboration: Low-code aids remote work, enabling pair programming where teams work on the same model simultaneously.
- Domain Expertise: Citizen developers with niche domain knowledge can better optimize applications to their industry needs. Knowing a factory production yield, for example, can help better construct a manufacturing application.
- Women in Tech: Koenigsberg notices significantly more female involvement at low-code themed events. Hopefully, low-code can have a balancing effect on gender participation in tech.
Final Thoughts

The Mendix “Developer Drought Index” revealed areas of high demand and short supply throughout the U.S. Interestingly, 92% of the job ads analyzed in the study required a specific location. Regardless, the report concludes there are compelling “opportunities for companies and individuals to decentralize talent away from established tech hubs using virtual teams and cloud technology.”

Low-code seeks to democratize software development to keep deployments on pace with the intense demand for software. Of course, low-code is no cure-all, and Developer Drought locations will likely still seek external or offshore hiring to supplement. However, low-code may offer the respite needed during uncertain times.
August 31, 2020
Survey Surfaces Impact of COVID-19 on DevOps Teams

A survey of 500 IT and engineering professionals across software and finance industries published today by Harness, a provider of continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform, suggests there is significant room to improve application development processes now that most DevOps teams are working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The survey finds only 43% of developers said development velocity has increased since COVID-19, while just over half (52%) said they are happier in their roles since the pandemic began. Ravi Lachhman, a developer evangelist for Harness, said as velocity increases so does the need to automate DevOps processes across a distributed application development team. The level of automation achieved, in turn, has a direct impact on developer satisfaction.

Despite any productivity concerns, however, nearly three-fourths of developers (74%) said their organization plans to keep a remote or distributed workforce following the pandemic. That compares to only 2% who said their teams were fully remote prior to the pandemic.

On the plus side, developers are overwhelmingly satisfied (94%) with their employer’s investment in employee growth and development, and two-thirds (66%) said they value their companies even more than they did before the crisis. However, only a little more than half, (52%) said it was unlikely they would change jobs within the next year. Among developers who make less than $75,000, 54% said they are at least somewhat likely to change jobs, compared to 46% of those making more than that.

Compensation was the most-cited priority for switching jobs. Over a third (35%) said that if they were to look for a new employer, their top priority would be better pay. That compares to 27% who would prioritize more opportunities for career and professional growth and 20% who would switch for the ability to work remotely. Another 13% would leave for better benefits, while 5% cited shorter hours.

Almost two-thirds (60%) anticipated that further salary cuts or layoffs for their development teams are at least somewhat likely. So far, 28% of developers reported there have been layoffs at their organizations, with 22% saying those layoffs included members of their teams. Only 29% of developers said they have seen an increase in developer onboarding since the pandemic began, compared to 42% who saw a decrease. Another 29% saw no change.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents who earn $150,000 or more are happier in their roles since COVID-19 began (64%), while 44% of those who make $75,000 or less are happier.

Among developers over the age of 55, almost three-quarters (70%) said they are either less happy or their happiness has not changed. Interestingly, that compared with 43% of millennials. The report also noted both men and women feel they are compensated fairly, at 81% and 82%, respectively.

The so-called “new normal” that DevOps teams are adjusting to is clearly taking a toll. For the most part, the transition to working from home full-time has not been as disruptive as many initially feared. However, it’s also clear many organizations will need to revisit how their DevOps workflows are constructed to accommodate the fact that most DevOps teams won’t be returning to an office anytime soon.

August 27, 2020
Healthcare Increasingly Embracing DevOps

Speed and efficiency rank high as reasons why among respondents to a survey of healthcare organizations that have adopted DevOps

While the novel coronavirus pandemic has hurt many industries, few have faced the immediate difficulties that the healthcare industry has had to manage. While trying to deliver care during one of the most significant healthcare crises in generations, providers must also contend with all the challenges every other organization must contend with as they strive to keep their business technology systems up and running securely.

To that end, a recent survey found that healthcare organizations are increasingly embracing DevOps. According to the study from Redgate Software, the “2020 Database DevOps Report for the Healthcare Sector,” 70% of respondents have adopted DevOps across all or some projects or have a proof of concept to use DevOps techniques. In fact, at 41%, more healthcare organizations have moved out of the proof-of-concept stage than other sectors such as financial services and government, at 36%.

“We know that the healthcare sector is facing unprecedented demands from the pandemic and other regulatory struggles, and DevOps is the best way to tackle these issues,” Kendra Little, Redgate DevOps Advocate, said in a statement. “By then extending those practices into the database, the healthcare sector can not only improve the quality and efficiency of these systems but ensure patient data remains secure and maintain compliance practices.”

There are a handful of motivations behind the shift. The increased risk of failed deployments/downtime was cited as the top reason healthcare organizations moved to DevOps by 24% of respondents, while 21% reported inability to respond to changing requirements and 20% cited slow development and release cycles as the top reason.

When it comes to automation, the report found that the healthcare sector is adopting automation across the database development process more than other industries. The majority are managing to do so while remaining compliant, or so they say—58% of respondents claim they have version control measures for database code in place. The primary motivations to automate database delivery had to do with efficiency and risk reduction, with 27% wanting to free developer time, 22% wanting speed of delivery and 12% wanting to reduce data loss risk.

“What’s surprising this year is the way North American respondents are surging ahead, with 55% saying that they deploy database changes daily, weekly or even on-demand,” Little said. “This indicates that they’re embracing Agile practices to better meet the needs of doctors, patients and remote services like telehealth that rely on these databases each day. We’ll be watching this space closely as the sector continues to change during the pandemic and in response to pressing compliance needs.”

With the rush to telemedicine and electronic medical records, it is surprising that only 42% of respondents said they use the cloud in some capacity. That’s a number that’s sure to rise in the months ahead as remote access to medical services continues.

As organizations everywhere strive to do more with less, and remotely, health care is particularly challenged. And as the industry continues to work under strain, more will likely continue to embrace DevOps and cloud computing as ways to meet their objectives and deliver care reliably.

August 12, 2020
Pandemic Provides IT Teams a Chance to Shine

Few would argue that the novel coronavirus pandemic hasn’t dramatically changed enterprise IT. This is especially so when it comes to both the management of IT as well as the very relationship between IT staff and the rest of the business. But how many would have predicted that the relationship between IT and business leaders would have improved since the start of the pandemic?

According to a recent survey, that’s been precisely the outcome for roughly 43% of organizations. The study is from IT services provider Ensono, which questioned 153 IT decision-makers within the United States and the UK. The research was conducted during the first week of July 2020.

Further, 32% of IT decision-makers said that their IT budgets are increasing, and 33% have been given more scope to define IT spending since the beginning of the pandemic. Just 5% said that they’ve been given less scope to define their IT spending.

The survey also confirmed that the pandemic has increased pressure for enterprises to transform themselves digitally. Fortunately, IT has proven its value, at least when it comes to reliability. Despite staff having to work remotely and maintain socially distant, thereby increasing demand for software access, 1 in 4 respondents said they didn’t face any downtime issues. At the same time, only 2% reported between 24 and 48 hours of downtime.

Additionally, 38% of respondents said that the pandemic helped to improve their understanding of IT. In comparison, 30% of IT decision-makers said they now have more control over business decisions, while only 4% said they now have less control. For 10%, there has been no perceived change in their relationship with the rest of the business outside IT.

These findings echo those of an earlier study this year from services provider BDO, whose 2020 Digital Transformation Survey, which measured the digital transformation efforts of middle-market organizations, found many of the digital transformation failures stemmed from leadership failures. These include lack of skills or training (41%), employee pushback (30%), poor communication or project management (28%) and lack of leadership or vision (28%) as top reasons for digital efforts failing. “Change readiness is a function of culture, commitment, and capacity to meet the objective and see it through. In a time of competing priorities, systemizing an approach to change management is more essential to organizational agility than ever,” BDO said in its statement.

It’s certainly essential for those organizations that participated in the Ensono survey, with 56% reporting being under greater urgency to digitally transform their business and about 25% of organizations reporting that events have forced them to begin their digitalization efforts immediately.

July 31, 2020
Engineering Productivity Lessons From COVID-19
The world became a different place post-COVID-19 and how we work, communicate and collaborate has been redefined, possibly forever. Our company has a distributed team across the U.S. and India for development and operations. When “shelter in place” hit the entire world, we were not sure how we’d be able to execute our projects, customer commitments and day-to-day operations. Most of our engineers rarely worked from home, and in India, some even left their homes to be with extended families and parents during the lockdown.

In first-ever crises like the pandemic, leadership teams have to rethink everything to ensure safety for employees while keeping them engaged, motivated and performing during highly disruptive and stressful times.

Maintaining During COVID-19

Here are five strategies and tactics that we applied and iterated to help our teams focus and execute during very unusual and difficult times.
1. Embrace the change.
2. Listen to employees.
3. Empower staff at every level.
4. Communicate, communicate and communicate.
5. Facilitate outcome-driven engagement, development and execution.
Embrace the Change

It was important for the leadership team to be intentional and systematic in accepting the change and establishing proper guidelines, tools and processes to transition quickly to a work-from-home environment. Selecting the same tool(s) for everyone established consistent, exclusive communications to help mitigate isolation. Some employees needed extra guidance in setting the workplace, schedule and systems to be effective working remotely.

Listening and Sharing

Employee health and safety was the top priority when lockdowns began, and it started with active listening to employees. Many employees needed to discuss the latest news on the pandemic or express concerns about loved ones who had contracted the virus. We created different levels of informal and formal check-in sessions in the early days of “shelter in place” to discuss anything, from family challenges including child care and remote school to news and market updates. Having open conversations about shared stress during the onset of the pandemic proved valuable in creating mutual support that we all needed to carry on with our daily obligations at work and at home.

Empowerment at Each Level

As we enter this next phase of COVID-19, with many of us fully engaged in some form of “new normal,” we have focused on aligning producers and consumers of deliverables to ensure they are fully engaged and understand the dependencies. This entails asking for individual accountability on deliverables and also encouraging people to work on aspirational goals.

We were already practicing objectives and key results (OKRs), but COVID-19 made it clear we needed to push harder on further refining OKRs and helping individuals prioritize and rationalize their goals as they progress. The goal-setting through OKRs has been super helpful in bringing our remote employees together on the same page with shared initiatives and missions.

Communicate and Overcommunicate

Frequent communications and collaboration across teams was a priority, allowing managers to ensure a clear line of sight into deliverables, priorities, trade-offs, logistical challenges and dependencies. The overarching goal was to keep people productive and avoid unnecessary delays in projects. While it was important in the early stages of the pandemic to overcommunicate across teams, in time, installing the right processes, tools and objectives drove engagement.

Outcome-driven Development and Execution

We use KPIs to measure outcomes on a daily and weekly basis. The outcome could be as simple as fortification of certain buggy areas of the product or security testing and fixing or automating defects. Outcomes can also be future looking cool experimentations that drive product ideas and generate compelling customer value. But the key is to make sure the team understands what success looks like throughout the journey of driving the execution of the outcome to the finish line. A simple example could be to review all security CVEs for open source libraries used in the product and ensure they are updated with the latest security patches.

We were surprised and delighted to see employees taking matters into their own hands by doing more than they were asked, especially in cases where they could bring their creativity to the table. As leaders, we sometimes undermine the power of an empowered team and the magic it brings to add measurable customer and business value.

The last few months have been taxing on everyone around the world; we do not know what things will look like in six or 12 months. Yet, we’ve also had the opportunity to learn some invaluable lessons about leadership, management and team culture. Moving forward past this pandemic’s inevitable conclusion, individual empowerment with outcome-based objectives will be the new recipe for engineering success. We’ve seen first hand how human creativity can get a boost when employees are motivated to share their stories, display their ideas no matter how rough they are and work together toward clear goals and a common shared vision.
July 24, 2020
Has the Pandemic Made DevOps Tougher or Easier?

How has COVID-19 impacted the way DevOps professionals approach their work?

The current, unpredictable economic climate as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic has exposed a glaring need for organizations to be able to do more with less. They have fewer resources and even less margin of error now to maintain customer relationships, keep up the pace of innovation and stay ahead of competitors. This global crisis has shifted more end users toward digital services, increasing the pressure further on organizations to deliver robust digital services to both their customers and employees. Meeting that need in a short amount of time is, suffice it to say, extremely challenging.

All of this has shaken up norms for DevOps professionals and created an even greater need to accelerate continuous automation, break down silos between teams and cultivate greater cross-team collaboration, to help their organizations continue business as usual—in other words, a greater need for DevOps, period.

Let’s take a look at how today’s new normal has in some ways made DevOps transformations easier and more widely accepted, and in other ways made DevOps more complicated—and what leadership can do about it.

Improved Trust and Collaboration Among IT Teams

Trust and collaboration form the base of true DevOps cultures. Anything an organization can do to make collaborating easier and eliminate unfair advantages between teams makes DevOps easier to facilitate. If half your team is working in the office and half is working remotely, that is not an even playing field; there are advantages to sharing an office and being able to communicate in-person that those who work remotely don’t have.

It’s also a matter of trust. Trust is not always assumed for employees working remotely. People in the office might feel skeptical that those at home just aren’t working as hard as they are. The advantage of everyone having to work remotely for the last several months is that we’re now all on a level playing field; we’ve all been in the same work-from-home boat. That has eliminated unfair advantages and helped boost trust among team members.

The more you trust each other, the easier it is to collaborate and delegate work, which removes some of the typical hurdles for DevOps projects.

Increased Use of Automation

Alongside trust and collaboration, automation is another key pillar of DevOps. In the past, teams may have been skeptical about automating their work, figuring it was just easier to do it themselves.

But, the massive spike in demand for IT services this year put a lot of pressure on traditional IT teams to get services up and running, provision machines and troubleshoot access problems, among other things. The only way to scale up to meet these demands without being overworked was to adopt continuous automation.

Now automation skeptics have seen for themselves the value of automating tasks to make work more manageable during unexpected digital activity peaks.

Growing DevOps Skills Gaps Around Automation, Kubernetes

The good news is, DevOps projects have been excelling in the new normal thanks to these accelerations in collaboration, trust and automation. But the flip side of more automation is a greater need to pick up new skills for making automation work.

Those working remotely without kids to look after might find more free time to spend on leveling up their automation skills, such as learning Python and other new script languages. But those who have to pull double-duty between their own job and other household tasks demanding immediate attention—such as homeschooling and looking after young children—might be less likely to have that opportunity. This could put many people at a long-term disadvantage as skills gaps continue to grow around automation. We may be looking at the possibility of certain demographics of employees (i.e. those who aren’t currently raising families or school-aged children) having more access to skills and educational opportunities than those who do.

This is also an issue with Kubernetes. Enterprise adoption of Kubernetes is growing rapidly as the container platform of choice for managing dynamic multi-cloud environments. But adoption is moving so quickly that even the teams who work with Kubernetes can find themselves behind the curve before they know it. This Kubernetes education gap is getting bigger every day, and the people who may have time now to keep themselves informed about Kubernetes will be at a greater advantage than those who just don’t have the time for after-work training.

The Role for DevOps Leaders in This Moment

For all the instability going on today, DevOps projects seem to generally be in a good spot, thanks to growing trust and collaboration between teams and a greater acceptance of the need for continuous automation. But as we start returning to normalcy and heading back to the office, leaders must not allow their teams to lapse back into old habits.

Leadership will need to come up with new rules of engagement for working in the office to eliminate unfair advantages that used to exist. For example, at my company, we’ve established that once offices are fully reopened, meetings will only be held in-person if everyone invited is present. If one person invited to the meeting is remote, then everyone will join remotely. Organizations should look to adopt similar rules, as the transition from working virtually to in-office is going to be a long and challenging one, with not everyone returning all at once.

In addition, organizations and leadership teams need to dedicate more official work time to training and educating employees on new tech such as automation and Kubernetes to even the playing field, develop more highly skilled teams and close these skills gaps. Team leaders must ensure that everyone is on the same page and that it’s not just those who had the most free time while quarantining who are coming out ahead.

The behaviors we’ve picked up during social distancing—new opportunities for continuous learning, wider adoption of automation, elimination of unfair advantages for remote workers—are making DevOps better. But these are practices we have to continue carrying forward in the new normal and beyond.

July 14, 2020
Cloud Is Red Hot in the COVID-19 Era
As digital transformation accelerates, cloud services are helping organizations thrive in a COVID-19 world

As the days tick by and the gloomy ramifications of COVID-19 become more apparent, one harsh truth has become crystal clear: Industries that have invested in digital transformation stand a better chance of recovery and survival than others.

The banking industry is a lighthouse example of this principle. Even though the brick-and-mortar branches have had to pull down shutters because of lockdowns and social distancing requirements, many banks have still operated their businesses as usual. They have kept the lights on and handled the pressure of increased online and mobile transactions thanks to cloud-based services.

While the internet has been a key enabler for digital banking, cloud has become the backbone. Cloud is making IT infrastructure vanish. Cloud is where businesses render servers, churn and analyze data, and keep applications humming so they can collaborate with partners and customers.

Many businesses are quickly turning around, moving at speed to adapt and transform their operations. YMCA, Planet Fitness and Nike are offering online fitness classes. Schools and colleges are providing online learning. The demand for Netflix and Amazon Prime has gone up dramatically, and both organizations are now easing telecom network congestion by lowering their bit rates. Online grocery retailers are attempting to keep pace with demand spikes. And working from home has gained momentum, sending the demand for routers, modems and data cards through the roof.

We will see a slew of innovations like these in the coming months, from businesses big and small, that will bring cloud services into sharp focus with their need for scale in a COVID-19 world. Everyone is looking to the cloud to reimagine businesses and make collaboration happen on an unprecedented scale, and the cloud has proven its ability to respond with speed while remaining robust.

While enterprise IT, governments, entrepreneurs and other organizations work on their plans to respond to crises, the focus should be on providing great user experience in the post-COVID-19 era. In regard to the cloud, enterprises should focus on the following key tactics to prepare accordingly:
1. Scaling existing services: Applications currently hosted on-premises will move to the cloud. Extending the data center via software-defined data center solutions into hyperscalers will help achieve scale and business flexibility.
2. Giving businesses ample wiggle room: By adopting a multi-cloud strategy, businesses can de-risk themselves against failure, capacity challenges and operational barriers.
3. Extending and expanding geographical reach: This can be done by deploying applications to geo-specific cloud platforms.
4. Going cloud-native: Design and develop new applications on PaaS using a DevOps approach for rapid rollouts.
5. Strengthening the core strategy: The strategy should be to support rapid and unexpected changes in work and service consumption needs through optimal network bandwidth, VPN connectivity, bandwidth throttling, consumption-based adoption model, remote VDI as a service and SD-WAN based solutions.
6. Investing in a heightened security posture: Cloud solutions should be based on data classification (privacy, availability) without sacrificing application, infrastructure, access or data security.
7. Developing new working models: Address medium and long-term requirements with a hybrid support model and local onsite versus remote versus offshore support.
Having achieved the above, enterprises would be wise to reduce their operations costs and channel the savings into new cloud initiatives. Enterprises should attempt to extend the life cycle of their existing assets before considering a refresh, while simultaneously moving to a subscription-based, pay-as-you-go model rather than footing steep licensing bills.

But the cloud journey doesn’t end there. Goal-oriented and highly motivated businesses will use their cloud credits to support proofs-of-concept and other essential services. One way of doing this is to containerize applications and remediate end-of-life issues around OS, improving computing density and rationalizing OS licenses for cost savings. The other established route to achieve savings is to outsource value streams to trusted partners.

COVID-19 is going to accelerate the cloud journey for scores of enterprises, and investments in the technology will quickly show their upsides—improved business resilience, cost control, and above all, the ability to keep the lights on.
July 8, 2020
How COVID-19 Has Affected Digital Transformation

The current COVID-19 pandemic may have changed the way many of us work and impacted productivity, but digital transformation marches on. With technology arguably more important than ever, digital transformation needs acceleration, and companies are beginning their journey with the cloud. That’s according to results from a survey by cloud service provider Ancoris and the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF).

The survey, which was conducted in the UK by Vanson Bourne prior to the lockdown, is comprised of responses from IT companies and business decision-makers in digital transformation to understand how they were utilizing next-generation technologies and the cloud. According to the results, 80% said they had their digital transformation strategies at hand, compared to today. With the novel coronavirus putting more pressure and less time on these companies to plan, only 18% of them have a strategy in place. “The very survival of office-based organization has hinged on their ability to adapt and go remote as quickly as possible,” Ancoris CEO David McLeman noted, which is putting pressure on companies to pivot as quickly as possible.

Before the lockdown, the cloud was considered a vital element of their digital transformation efforts for 25% of respondents in the business and professional services sectors, 23% in the public sector, 22% in retail and surprisingly low 19% of respondents in the financial sector.

Among other key findings: twenty-eight percent of businesses already have their digital transformation strategies fully in place, while 54% have begun their implementation. Businesses are also seeing the importance of the cloud, as 93% of respondents said their companies use it in some sort of way. And 25% of respondents said that they don’t get enough assistance from partners in helping them make strides in digital transformation.

McLeman emphasized the importance of having external partners now and after COVID-19. They play a “leading role” in helping companies digitize, he said, and will be an “increasing integral component on ongoing digital transformation” post-COVID-19.

July 6, 2020
How to Reduce Engineer Burnout During COVID-19

Burnout is increasingly common during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here’s how to cope effectively

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we all work, connect and live. Many teams have been forced to transition their work into their homes and to learn ways to organize and execute that they aren’t used to. For product and engineering teams, development now occurs in isolation; meetings are held via email, messaging app or calls; and decisions are made asynchronously. The feedback loop we are used to has slowed and often links in the chain are broken. Additionally, our working environments have changed dramatically—many of us are working from unfamiliar environments unsuited to focused work, while juggling the needs of those we live with who also need space to work or who may be learning to operate without a job or school to go to.

This is a new kind of stress that most of us have never before experienced. Expecting to complete projects in the same manner as before while working in a different environment and moving at the same pace is inevitably going to cause burnout. On top of that, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused many businesses—especially online retailers—to ramp up their project development and even start brand new projects to adjust to the new normal.

Burnout is more common within organizations than many like to believe. It can’t be measured easily by the number of hours worked or the amount of sleep one gets. It is more often related to prolonged stretches of elevated pressure and to operating from a place where you start each day feeling behind, fighting against quicksand. Burnout can cause exhaustion, trouble sleeping and an inability to focus. It can also have an impact on a person’s mental and emotional well-being, creating a state of fragility born from overtiredness and frustration.

These symptoms can lead to a loss of empathy, a rise in conflicts and a decline in performance. Burnout can also cause people to feel unsatisfied with their job and question their role and purpose within an organization. Not only does this affect employees, but it also has a negative impact on the entire business. A survey from Gallup showed that burned-out employees are 60% more likely to take a sick day, and more than twice as likely to be actively seeking a different job.

Now more than ever, it is important for leaders to be watchful for burnout among their teams and to take proactive steps to protect team members. When performance goals are missed, it is far more effective to readjust expectations and set new timelines than it is to count each day that slips past the old one.

We are all going through an unprecedented time, which takes its toll on employees in different ways. If a teammate is struggling with their work or difficult in their communication, there very well could be factors going on outside of the current work situation that are contributing. Old processes should be reviewed and new ones invested in to make workflows purposeful and more effective in the current climate. It is common for employees who are experiencing burnout to view their performance as a personal failure, which leads to demotivation in their job.

Engineering teams can alleviate the stress that leads to burnout by actively and visibly reinforcing the value that the team is delivering and by ensuring progress is achievable, measurable and frequent. An agile workflow can be a great way to do this. By incrementally releasing features and achieving milestones, the team can avoid an endless push. By measuring the results of those changes, the team will see the value that they are delivering and gain greater confidence in themselves. For engineering teams who are responsible for production systems, finding ways to minimize the noise in your monitoring can help reduce context switching and give everyone more all-important sleep.

One way to achieve these results within your organization is to make feature flags a core part of your workflow. Feature flags allow for engineering teams to operate with greater autonomy, as code developed by one engineer can be released before its dependencies are completed, safe in the knowledge that the code will not be exposed to users. They allow for enabling the code safely and incrementally, minimizing the stress of releases and giving teams an escape hatch should an issue occur.

The benefits of feature flags also extend to measurement, as they are the enabling tool for conducting experiments as a team no matter where you are. Experimenting, especially in the form of A/B testing, allows teams to get a better understanding of customer behavior.

As people are isolating themselves from physical spaces, our digital spaces are changing rapidly. The measurement of that change is driving the success of businesses around the world, and teams that understand that can gain greater motivation for the work that needs to be done. For companies that are struggling in these uncertain times, effective measurement and control of your development can help focus efforts toward the areas of your product that are best addressing your customers’ new needs and behaviors.

As our teams have spread apart, it is more important than ever to work together. Validate projects early, deliver work incrementally, measure accomplishments and progress and empathize with your teammates. The risk of burnout is greater now than ever.

June 25, 2020