What is DevOps ?

In earlier days, solutions were associated with getting the technology right. The key was technology, the solution was technology and the business expected and paid for technology. Times have changed. Well, at least for those of us taking notice. Today technology is hardly ever a significant problem. Technically, we have a less complicated world. Over the years we have come to understand that technology is basically an arrangement of Processing, Memory, Networking and Storage. We have mastered utilization by using virtualization. We understand horizontal scaling is ‘better’ than vertical scaling and that we can deliver the PMNS more easily in converged and hyperconverged products that also contain the software solution. We have automated many of the key activities to enable reduction in time and costs.

The Cloud paradigm came along and made life easier by helping us to become Service Brokers rather than server admins or network engineers. To the customer we are now Service Brokers; well, we should be. We should be experiencing shorter procurement cycles given that applications and services (the solutions) are delivered from a Service Catalog. Although this can be true in the Public Cloud deployment model and the Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery model, when it comes to Private Cloud procurement we still seem to be stuck in the past and suffer unnecessary delays. Even as Public Cloud services are taken up by more and more businesses the activity of getting the servers, applications and services ‘up there’ still makes for hard going. All the work that is required to design and deliver a Public Cloud hosted environment is still steeped in old-fashioned working practices.

Despite all this change and learning, solution design and implementation is still a thorny job and produces mountains of documentation (some needed, some pointless), endless Gant charts and interminable meetings trying to get the solution in place and delivered. Why is this?

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