The seamless journey of DevOps automation in this article, from development to deployment leads to improved revenue, where efficiency meets excellence from initial development to seamless deployment.
Contents
1. The Significance of Streamlining Development to Deployment
2. How Key Strategies for DevOps Success Elevate Revenue Generation?
3. Automating Development
4. Configuration Management
5. Top Providers for DevOps Security and Collaboration
6. Exploring Emerging Technologies in DevOps
Deployment without DevOps is characterized by a traditional, often siloed approach, typically following a linear and sequential 'waterfall' model. Development
and operations teams, in such cases, work independently then lead to limited collaboration and communication. The process involves manual handovers, often with insufficient knowledge transfer, resulting in longer release cycles, making deployments riskier and more error-prone due to the bundling of numerous changes. Additionally, the feedback loop is limited, causing delays in implementing user or operational feedback. This is where streamlined deployment comes into the picture.
For Example, Etsy, which grew at a regular pace, following the traditional waterfall approach, achieved 80 releases a day rather than deploying code twice a week, post-DevOps integration.
1. The Significance of Streamlining Development to Deployment
The previously occurring Integration Issues can now be avoided by shifting the model to DevOps.For example, aligning and integrating the front and backend error-free is no longer tedious. Each developer has their local setup which can cause the infamous 'it works on my machine' syndrome when the code fails to run in different environments. This, ultimately, streamlines the end-to-end DevOps automation process flow. The traditional workflows, often lacking continuous testing and detection of errors, will eliminate costly delays and rework. Collaborating on code, especially in large teams, became a hassle with no shared tools or platforms. While DevOps management platforms enable teams to collaborate and work together, DevOps collaboration tools and technologies manage work, improve team communication, and share expertise.
The market size for custom software development was valued at $388.98 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow to $650.13 billion by 2025.
2. How Key Strategies for DevOps Success Elevate Revenue Generation?
An effective DevOps approach prioritizes customers. Focusing on strong software justifies extended development and release timelines. It also ignores the most important factor: software users. Consumers want a good product that solves their problem rather than the process. A good DevOps approach puts the team in the customer's shoes.
While 22% of rework time is minimized with DevOps practices, the deployment frequency of firms with DevOps as compared to those without DevOps is a whopping 200 times.
Adit Modi, Cloud Architect and Community Leader at Digital Alpha reported that he saw a whopping 30% increase in
developer productivity within the first month in a startup.
A robust approach for automating development operations is CI. CI automates code build and change integration. An end-to-end DevOps automation implementation method emphasizes fast, automated systems. Continuous integration lets developers integrate code more often and create and merge code. Implementing CI saves a lot of time in development. It reduces regression bug-resolving time while promoting code quality. A promising CI pipeline helps one understand the codebase and customer features.
For example, as stated in
Netflix Technology Blog, Titus is Netflix’s infrastructural foundation for container-based applications. It provides Netflix scale cluster, resource management, and container execution with deep Amazon EC2 integration as well as common Netflix infrastructure enablement.
-
Infrastructure-as-a-code and Automation
IaC is a compelling way to automate IT infrastructure management, provisioning, and configuration. Maintaining ideal infrastructure is the fundamental goal of IaC. Infrastructure-as-a-code practices in DevOps are utilized to administer the server, storage, and networking infrastructure of a data center. It is designed to facilitate configuration and administration on a massive scale and automatically handles and manages steady-state deviations. Implementing a DevOps automation guide is among the best DevOps strategies for companies seeking to increase revenue as it streamlines development and operations, leading to faster deployment cycles, improved efficiency, and, ultimately, a quicker time-to-market for new and innovative services that drive sales growth.
For example, Kloudspot drastically reduced development and service management time by 50% while deploying its new
end-to-end DevOps automation infrastructure via an automated system.
-
Constant Delivery and Deployment
Continuous delivery (CD) helps teams build high-quality software quickly. Continuous delivery pipelines provide software on time with minimal manual intervention. CD is an effective DevOps release technique for faster software development, testing, and deployment.
In an
interview with Clare Liguori, Principal Software Engineer for AWS container services, she emphasized that AWS just doesn't enforce automation onto its processes and hope for the best; its automated deployment practices are carefully built, tuned, and tested based on what helps them balance their deployment safety against deployment speed.
Microservices
are compact, deployable services designed in the style of intricate applications. They are merely an iteration of the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) paradigm. In addition to being independent of technology, they exchange information using a variety of communication protocols. The noteworthy part is that one service does not crash or impact other parts of an application!
For example, Uber's infrastructure exemplifies a commendable microservice architecture. Several thousand microservices comprise this component and communicate via remote procedure calls (RPC), as noted in their
Domain-Oriented Microservice Architecture blog.
3. Automating Development
Automated ecosystem orchestration is becoming increasingly important due to the proliferation of Kubernetes architectures, which have transcended the human capacity for management. Continuous integration and deployment are executed in four phases by the CI/CD pipeline: source, build, test, and deploy.
Automation in DevOps is mission-critical to an organization’s ability to keep pace with customers and the rapidly changing market. Reducing toil and minimizing toolchain complexity through automation enables developers to focus on what they do best, delivering innovation that drives value for the business.
- Hilliary Lipsig, Principal Site Reliability Engineer, RedHat
3.1. Continuous Integration (CI) Essentials
A non-CI environment's communication overhead can result in an intricate and entangled synchronization task, thereby increasing project bureaucratic expenses unnecessarily. The manual coordination encompasses operations, the remainder of the organization, and the development teams.
CI facilitates the expansion of engineering teams' headcount and output. By integrating CI, software developers are empowered to independently develop features in parallel. Product and engineering communication can be extraordinarily cumbersome. Continuous integration enables this engineering to estimate delivery times for requests when the risk associated with integrating new changes is uncertain. Thereby, CI helps quicken delayed code releases and minimize failure rates.
The essentials for an efficient functional CI are:
-
Automate tests to run for every change to the main repository.
-
Run tests on every branch of the repository rather than just focusing on the main branch.
-
Ensure that every feature that gets developed has automated tests.
-
Get a CI service to run those tests automatically on every push to the main repository.
-
Integrate changes regularly.
-
Establish security early in pipelines before building artifacts or deploying.
-
Scan built container images for vulnerabilities with vulnerability scanning for artifact analysis.
-
Implement linting and static code analysis early in pipeline to avoid weaknesses like accepting raw inputs.
-
Use binary authorization to prevent images that contain vulnerabilities from being deployed to clusters.
-
Create pipelines to enable rapid iteration. Ideally, CI pipelines should run in less than 10 minutes.
3.2. Streamlining Continuous Deployment and Delivery (CD)
-
Use GitOps methodology to review changes before they are deployed through merge or pull requests and help in recovery through snapshots in case of failure.
-
Promote, rather than rebuild container images, to avoid minor differences across code branches.
-
Consider using more advanced deployment and testing patterns according to business needs. These include Recreating a deployment, Rolling update deployment, and blue-green deployment.
-
Use Separate clusters for different environments like development environments, pre-production environments (Staging or QA) and production environments.
-
Keep pre-production environments close to production; while pre-production clusters should ideally be identical to production clusters, they can be scaled-down replicas for cost considerations.
-
Implement a clearly defined rollback strategy to address any substantial issues that may arise throughout the deployment process, enabling users to swiftly revert to the previous version, thereby reducing the likelihood of any adverse effects.
3.3. Efficient Version Control
Teams typically face these challenges when adopting CI/CD:
-
Conflicts due to manual testing
-
Downtime risk
-
Inefficient resource utilization
Kubernetes has the capability to resolve these issues. In a CI/CD pipeline, it decreases the time and effort necessary to develop and deploy applications. The model's effective resource management increases hardware utilization, automates management procedures, and decreases customer-detrimental disruptions. Cluster management, orchestrate deployment and provisioning, and declarative constructs are some specializations performed by Kubernetes.
Efficient
version control is demonstrated by Kubernetes through the below mentioned techniques:
Kubernetes packages applications and their dependencies through containers. Enabling consistent versioning of applications, this practice standardizes environments
throughout development, testing, and production. DevOps delivery infrastructure considerations are minimized with Kubernetes, which also enhances application resiliency, automation, and scalability. Incorporating version control directly into the deployment process, Kubernetes enables the automated deployment of new application versions and permits a rollback to previous versions if issues are raised. Kubernetes provides support for a range of deployment strategies, including blue-green and canary deployments. This support enables the gradual rollout and testing of new versions while ensuring the continuity of service.
4. Configuration Management
Unit testing, integration testing, acceptance testing, load testing, system testing, and end-user testing are all critical components of a development infrastructure. As testing advances production environments, the complexity of these environments escalates. The role of automation in DevOps ensures that these environments are configured optimally through configuration management. DevOps configuration management automates routine maintenance tasks and frees up development time for the actual programming.
4.1. Role-based Configurations in DevOps
Role-based
configuration management in DevOps plays a significant role in managing infrastructure updates and creating organized systems. Roles, for example, bundle and organize automation tasks and configurations in a reusable manner, making it easier to handle complex workflows. These roles promote teamwork and efficiency in development. Role-based configurations are a sophisticated strategy for delineating access and operational privileges within the CI/CD pipeline tailored to the specific responsibilities of team members. This paradigm leverages identity and access management protocols to automate the enforcement of security policies, reducing the risk of unauthorized changes that lead to system vulnerabilities or compliance breaches. Organizations can create a more secure, stable, and efficient delivery environment by employing a granular control mechanism. As a result, this facilitates a higher caliber of software releases, optimized resource allocation, and an acceleration in delivering value to customers, which in turn can drive revenue growth and competitive advantage.
4.2. Dynamic Configuration Management (DCM)
DCM
addresses the entire lifecycle of an application. Top organizations implement dynamic configuration management because they recognize its criticality in enterprise-grade platforms. It addresses the limitations of static configuration management, which may hinder developer and Ops productivity. DCM uses a workload specification to create configurations, reducing the number of configuration files needed and simplifying the deployment process. This approach can significantly reduce configuration file numbers, improving overall business performance.
For example, an app with ten services and dependencies is deployed across four environments. Assuming an organization deploys
three times a day every 21 working days, a typical cloud native setup would be 300 to 600 configuration files with up to 30,000 versions a month. That is up to 95% fewer files than the static approach.
5. Top Providers for DevOps Automation
LambdaTest is a leading AI-powered unified test execution cloud platform, designed to meet the diverse needs of over 2 million users across 130 countries. With its emphasis on reducing time to market through accelerated test execution and quality assurance, LambdaTest offers a comprehensive suite of testing services, including live and automated cross-browser testing, real device testing, AI-powered visual regression testing, and OTT app testing. The platform integrates seamlessly into the CI/CD pipeline, providing enterprises with options for public cloud, dedicated cloud, or on-premise deployment.
Katalon is a cutting-edge quality management platform that empowers quality assurance, DevOps, and software teams to accelerate the efficient delivery of world-class customer experiences. Catering to over 30,000 teams worldwide, Katalon streamlines end-to-end software development with its capabilities in authoring, executing, and analyzing test automation across any application or environment. The platform's versatility is evident in its support for testing any app type through a single, all-encompassing solution enhanced by AI, to accelerate test creation and scale testing efforts. With features like no-code test recording, drag-and-drop test objects, native CI/CD integrations, and AI-powered regression testing, Katalon simplifies test automation, making it accessible for beginners while robust enough for experienced professionals.
Leapwork stands out as a pioneering AI-powered visual test automation platform, distinguished by its ability to enhance speed and efficiency in software testing significantly. Recognized as a Representative Vendor in the 2022 Gartner Market Guide for AI-Augmented Software Testing Tools and acclaimed for its remarkable ROI of 209% in 'The Total Economic Impact' study by Forrester, Leapwork has solidified its position as a leader in the industry. With a user-friendly visual interface akin to assembling Lego blocks, the platform ensures that enterprise teams can quickly learn, build, and maintain automation within an average ramp-up time of less than 30 days. Capable of working across all applications, Leapwork is ideally suited for enterprises with intricate tech stacks, leading to its adoption by hundreds of global enterprises across various industries, including notable clients like Mercedes Benz, PayPal, and Beckman Coulter.
Sauce Labs is recognized as a forefront provider of continuous testing and error reporting solutions, facilitating the development, delivery, and maintenance of high-quality code at unparalleled speed. With over four billion tests conducted on its comprehensive, unified test platform, Sauce Labs offers an unrivaled continuous testing solution globally, providing a 360-degree view of application experiences. Demonstrating significant business value, Sauce Labs has reported a 217% ROI, a payback period of less than six months, and a net present value of $6.8M, achieving up to 90% savings in developer and QA time. Trusted by industry leaders such as Stripe, Walmart, and Verizon Media, Sauce Labs empowers enterprises to improve user experience quality efficiently, supporting a wide array of testing needs, including cross-browser, mobile, API, and visual testing.
Opkey is revolutionizing test automation with its No-Code Test Automation platform, offering unparalleled efficiency and ease of use for business users and IT professionals. By instantly generating necessary test cases and transforming them into automated tests with a single click, Opkey accelerates digital transformation initiatives, enabling customers to achieve an average of 75% savings compared to manual testing. As the official Oracle partner and the top-rated app on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace, alongside being the only certified automated testing platform for Coupa and supporting over 150 technologies, Opkey has garnered industry recognition from Gartner, Forrester, and G2 Crowd, solidifying its position as a leader in providing cutting-edge test automation solutions.
SmartBear stands at the forefront of technology innovation, providing a comprehensive portfolio of trusted development and testing tools that enhance software quality and performance. With a focus on test management and automation, API development lifecycle, and application stability, the DevOps management platform ensures unparalleled visibility into the entire software development process, empowering teams to deliver superior user experiences. Dedicated to fostering a vibrant peer-to-peer community and committed to ethical corporate practices, SmartBear meets the dynamic needs of software teams dand strives to make the technology-driven world a better place through its commitment to social responsibility and open-source initiatives.
Cyara is at the vanguard of customer experience (CX) transformation, offering an AI-based CX transformation platform that enables enterprises to perfect interactions across multiple channels, including voice, video, digital, and chatbot experiences. Esteemed for facilitating continuous innovation and improvement in customer journeys, Cyara significantly reduces operational costs and mitigates risks associated with delivering high-quality customer interactions. Boasting a remarkable 96% customer retention rate and a world-class Net Promoter Score (NPS), the company is the trusted partner for leading global brands, ensuring exceptional customer satisfaction at scale. With its comprehensive approach, it accelerates the pace of innovation, assures a 334% ROI with payback in less than six months, and seamlessly integrates with major technology platforms, making it an indispensable tool for enterprises aiming to deliver flawless customer experiences.
Copado is redefining Salesforce development and testing with its unified CI/CD pipelines and AI-powered automated testing platform explicitly tailored for Salesforce environments. The introduction of Copado Explorer as the most straightforward Salesforce testing tool signifies Copado's commitment to streamlining quality assurance processes and eliminating the back-and-forth typically associated with testing. The platform's low-code development approach and intelligent test automation ensure applications work flawlessly from the first release. Moreover, Copado's end-to-end platform features empower teams with on-demand visibility, timely project delivery, and seamless integration across tech stacks, significantly reducing production bugs and facilitating agile development practices.
QMetry emerges as a pivotal automation company in DevOps engineered for Agile testing and DevOps teams, aimed at accelerating the development, management, and deployment of quality software with enhanced confidence. Catering to the imperative demand for quality software in digital transformation initiatives, it equips enterprises with a comprehensive agile testing solution, encompassing complete test management, test automation, and profound quality metrics and analytics. The QMetry suite, inclusive of QMetry test management, QMetry automation studio, and QMetry test management for Jira (QTM4J), stands out for its AI-driven quality orchestration capabilities, promoting rapid scalability, compliance-driven testing, and enhanced return on investment. Through its pioneering Gen AI features like intelligent search, automated test case generation, and flaky test detection, QMetry optimizes productivity and reusability and significantly shortens time to market, serving as an indispensable asset for enterprises striving for excellence in quality software delivery.
Delphix is the industry benchmark in DevOps test data management, offering a pivotal solution for businesses navigating the complexities of accelerating application delivery while ensuring data security and compliance. Serving as a catalyst for modernization, multi-cloud adoption, CI/CD achievement, and efficient recovery from downtime events like ransomware attacks, up to twice as fast, Delphix empowers customers to enhance developer productivity by 40%, reduce infrastructure costs by 72%, diminish business risk by 76%, and improve development refresh rates by 91%. Esteemed for its significant impact, as validated by an IDC report highlighting increased application release velocity and cost reduction, Delphix is trusted by the world's leading corporations.
6. Exploring Emerging Technologies in DevOps
The future of end-to-end DevOps automation promises even greater innovation and efficiency gains. We can anticipate the continued evolution of automation tools, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to optimize further and accelerate software delivery pipelines. Additionally, by incorporating security as a core DevOps principle, DevSecOps will become increasingly vital in safeguarding digital assets.
The importance of DevOps’ latest technologies in achieving streamlined operations cannot be overstated. By reducing manual interventions and fostering collaboration, businesses can consistently deliver high-quality software, respond rapidly to market changes, and ultimately enhance customer satisfaction. Moreover, the impact on ROI is substantial, with reduced operational costs, faster time-to-market, and increased revenue potential.