DevOps - Agility Reliability and Security in 2019

• By: JPM Edu Solutions
• DevOps, DevOps with Cloud

DevOps is a common technology which is widely used in the IT field. Before DevOps, the waterfall approach was developed, which laid down a step by step sequence so that planning, software development and operations was approached sequentially. However, customer preferences changed over the years and the waterfall method was insufficient to handle heavy IT loads. This lead to the development of DevOps for software design and development. Let us look at some of the functionalities of DevOps.

Does DevOps have the agility to adapt quickly to changing needs?

In the modern, fast paced business world, a digital business needs to rapidly meet the challenges of tackling new business priorities to keep in tune with market trends and customer requirements. This basic necessity requires the organistation to have a continuous and stable software development capability.

The DevOps paradigm introduced the continous deployment function to software development. It delivers better customer experience, at a faster pace than before. If DevOps has agility, it will help attain a high rate of customer retention. Since a significant portion of a digital business depends on recurring revenues from customer retention, it is one of the most important factors in profitabilty.

When the DevOps model is adopted by an organisation, it forces the Design, Development and Operational teams to break out of their isolated, self contained silo environment, to work as a group. This injects agility to the organisation since all teams interact with one another right through the planning, development, testing and operational phases and the “I” becomes “We”. Success or failure is owned by the group as a whole and this leads to greater synergy to see that things are done right from the word "go".

The agility of a DevOps culture is vital to its success.

Is the DevOps culture a reliable model for fast, successful and continuous Software development?

DevOps is a widely accepted organisation culture. As for the answer to the question of reliability, the answer is “Yes”. Let us delve into DevOps culture to see how this is so. Before DevOps came into the picuture, various teams in the IT department such as planning, development, operations, security etc. worked in independent silos, with little interaction. When a new App was launched, due to the lack of communications between the teams, the chances of failure at launch were great. Rectification time too was unacceptable.

In the DevOps culture, all teams broke out of their silos and worked as an entire team from start to finish. Each member knew what the development goal was and due to the DevOps culture interoperability of functions became standard.

This "We" approach meant that everyone was on the same page and at launch, the chances of the App crashing, was minimised to negligible levels. Yes, on the odd occassion, there could be a problem at launch. However, due to the teamwork approach, the problem was ‘owned’ by the entire team without the acrimony of ‘finger-pointing’. The problem could be tackled head-on in the least possible time. This gave the DevOps culture reliability.

What could be the security scenario in the DevOps environment for 2019?

In the DevOps environment, it is prudent to involve security ab initio to convert the environment to DevSecOps. When security concerns are taken care of in every stage of the App, from development to launch, continous testing can be done to ensure there are no gaps where security can be breached. When this is done, it gives a reason for optimism, but planning ahead is essential.

So what could the likely security vulnerabilities be in 2019?:

• Fewer data breaches – as compared to 2017, 2018 saw fewer reported breaches and CVE’s after the nightmarish 2017. This means Security teams are making headway in plugging the gaps in cyber security.
• Bigger data losses – though the number of breaches may be fewer, data loss per cyberattack is growing. This trend is expected to continue in 2019.
• Unpatched security flaws will get unwelcome attention – though manual patching of security flaws creates a risk, that seems to be the trend. Instead, by using runtime virtual patches that enable the fixing of detected flaws, downtime can be avoided.
• Security of Legacy Java Apps – this is a major headache for security teams. One of the best solutions to this problem is to virtually upgrade apps using compiler based technology plus a virtual container.

DevOps has improved the environment of software development to make it have agility and reliability with good security outlook for 2019. All it takes is for IT Managers to manage the transition to DevOps in the right manner. DevOps has opened up an exciting career in the IT field.