What is DevOps? This term has recently emerged in the field of technology companies. Upon hearing this term for the first time, some may think it's technical, complex, or limited to the world of programmers. However, this is not true. This term is a new methodology that technology companies are adopting. This is done to reduce operational risks, improve the quality of digital products, and accelerate the pace of their technical and software development processes.
In this article, we will learn what DevOps is and why technology companies need it.
What is meant by the term DevOps?
Technology companies typically work on their projects through two separate departments: a software development department and an operations department.
The software development team: works on writing code, building new features, and meeting customer requirements. Their goal is to launch a new product as quickly as possible.
The technical operations team: works on stabilizing servers, operating systems, and securing the infrastructure. Their goal is to maintain the continuity of services provided and ensure that no interruptions occur.
Working within this divide often created a lack of planning between the two teams and a lack of a complete picture. This led to numerous problems, including:
Slow product launches: Due to the slowness and complexity of coordination between the two teams at each launch.
Internal conflicts: In some cases, the software development team blames the technical operations team for slow launches, while the technical operations team blames the software development team for problems that arise after the launch.
Quality problems: Due to the lack of collaboration between the two teams, bugs are discovered late, increasing the cost of repair.
This is where DevOps comes in, an acronym for "Development" and "Operations." It's a methodology that aims to integrate the two teams into one integrated team. This helps accelerate software development, improve product quality, and reduce problems that arise after the launch.
What is the approach behind DevOps?
As we mentioned before, technology companies operate across several departments, most notably software development and technical operations. The lack of a framework that brings them together while working on a new product launch often causes a number of problems. However, in DevOps, teams work together using a unified methodology, sharing responsibility, using common tools, and easily discussing potential opportunities and challenges at each stage. This methodology relies on a set of practices, including:
Collaboration and Communication: Encouraging continuous interaction between all teams, which reduces errors and speeds up the pace of work.
Electronic Automation: Instead of performing repetitive tasks manually, which causes a lot of human error, DevOps helps automate these tasks and speed up processes.
Monitoring and Analysis: This methodology enables continuous monitoring of system performance, which helps detect and resolve any problems before they impact launch operations and delay them.
Agility: One of the practices of DevOps is adopting an Agility approach, which is characterized by flexibility in adapting to any changes without negatively impacting workflow. Through these practices, software development processes have become an integral part of technical operations, and vice versa. This contributes to an efficient and stable work environment.
Why do tech companies need DevOps?
After learning what DevOps is and how it connects technical teams (software development and technical operations) to work within a single framework, the question remains: What are the advantages or benefits that tech companies gain from implementing this methodology?
Accelerating Product Launches
In the world of technology, whoever releases new products, features, and updates the fastest often dominates the market. This is what DevOps achieves, as it significantly speeds up processes. Instead of releasing an update once or twice a year, you can now release small, continuous updates. This is thanks to:
Automation: Instead of spending hours performing daily tasks such as manually deploying updates, DevOps tools do this electronically and reliably.
Continuous Integration (CI): This is one of the technical tools within DevOps, helping developers integrate their new code continuously. It is then automatically tested to ensure it doesn't cause any problems.
Continuous Delivery (CD): This is another tool that automatically deploys tested, successful code to the operating environment.
All of this contributes to reducing the risks associated with launch and accelerating the release of new products or updates.
Improving Product Quality
By integrating testing and automation into the software development and technical processes, this helps significantly improve product quality. This is due to:
Early Detection of Errors: Discovering and correcting errors in the early stages of any software development process reduces the cost of remediation later.
Continuous Feedback: This helps developers receive immediate feedback on code performance, enabling them to improve it immediately.
Operational Stability: Integrating the work of both teams and following a single working methodology contributes to operational stability and scalability later on.
Increasing Operational Efficiency and Reducing Costs
Investing in DevOps tools may be expensive initially, but in the long run, it saves a lot of money, time, and effort.
Saving time and effort: By automating repetitive tasks, employees save significant time spent on traditional tasks, freeing them up to focus on more important tasks.
Enhancing resource utilization: By automating
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