DevOps Trends: the Growth Vectors of the Methodology

There's nothing better than classic — or is there?

The IT sector has never been conservative, and that's what we like about it. Thus, keeping pace with its dynamic might be challenging, especially if you have no guidelines whatsoever.

Since you're here, we suggest you're curious about DevOps perspective and its impact on your company. Say no more — we are glad to introduce the biggest trends of DevOps with our subjective thoughts on how they might be helpful.

Let's kick off.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) opens our rating of significant trends in DevOps. AI has taken the throne in IT, gradually changing the work processes. As a DevOps trend, it refers to integrating and utilizing AI technologies and techniques to enhance various aspects of the DevOps lifecycle.

In 2022, DevOps trends experienced significant growth, fueled by the emergence of more AI/ML tools and increased adoption by companies. These tools can enhance the automation and performance of day-to-day tasks.

Machine Learning analyzes vast amounts of data generated throughout the software development lifecycle, including logs, metrics, and user feedback. This analysis helps identify patterns, detect anomalies, and make data-driven decisions to optimize software performance, identify potential issues, and improve overall quality.

With AI, DevOps teams can proactively address potential bottlenecks and predict resource requirements. Given the advent of impressive technologies like ChatGPT, it is highly likely that these DevOps trends will continue to expand and gain momentum throughout 2023 and beyond.

What will you get? The brilliant opportunity to streamline your software development and operations processes, achieve higher efficiency, and deliver high-quality products at an accelerated pace.

And remember: AI is your assistant, not your rival.

Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Adoption

COVID-19 provoked the burst of remote work, and remote work revealed the potential and necessity of cloud infrastructure. 

As organizations embrace cloud computing, hybrid and multi-cloud strategies are no longer rare. And naturally, it affected DevOps practices.

In hybrid and multi-cloud environments, DevOps teams can choose the most suitable cloud providers and services for different aspects of their applications or workloads. In this way, the teams can leverage each cloud platform's unique strengths and capabilities, such as scalability, reliability, and specialized services, while maintaining control over sensitive data and critical workloads on-premises.

Profit? As it is.

Microservices

The emergence of microservices has transformed how software applications are designed, developed, and deployed. Their efficiency has absolutely proved itself: even giants like Netflix and Spotify started using them in their practice.

Why?

Because microservices are a perfect tool to transform a huge scope of work into small and manageable pieces. As a result, you get independently deployable services that are decentralized and developed separately from each other. Thus, DevOps teams deliver software more frequently, fostering innovation and granting greater control over deploying small features without impacting the entire codebase.

Microservices align well with DevOps principles, facilitating collaboration between development and operations teams. Since services can be developed and deployed independently, teams work in parallel, enabling faster feedback loops and more efficient problem resolution. This collaboration enhances the overall speed and quality of software delivery.

What we get: adopting Microservices proves advantageous for complex and evolving applications in various ways. It offers flexibility, scalability, and optimized costs, making it a favorable choice for developing and maintaining such applications.

DevSecOps

As a combination of development, security and operations, DevSecOps addresses security concerns early on, ensuring that security is not an afterthought but an integral part of the development process. 

DevSecOps plays a pivotal role in enhancing and fortifying security efforts. It ensures that testing, quality assessments, performance evaluations, and other security practices are conducted earlier and more frequently within the Software Development Life Cycle.

The DevSecOps trend has prompted organizations to adopt testing tools that reinforce this shift-left approach (we'll talk about it later). Static Application Security Testing (SAST), Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST), dependency scans, compliance scans, and container scans are being implemented to bolster security measures.

It's important to note that DevSecOps is not in conflict with DevOps; it is an integral part of it, providing support through integrated automation.

So be ready that when you incorporate security into the DevOps workflow, you will build more secure and resilient applications, reduce the risk of security breaches, and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements. 

Container Orchestration

Container orchestration opens the door to numerous benefits that align with the core principles of DevOps, like automation, scalability, and consistency. This tool enables easy management of containerized applications, allowing organizations to define and manage configuration parameters for their products. With container orchestration, companies can minimize deployment downtime and achieve automation and consistency.

Moreover, container orchestration has led to the emergence of a rich ecosystem of tools and frameworks. Platforms such as Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, and Apache Mesos have gained popularity and offer many features, extensions, and integrations to support container orchestration requirements. For example, Kubernetes, an open-source platform, enables enhanced application portability and resource scalability, empowering organizations to manage their containerized environments efficiently.

Notably, this trend has revolutionized how applications are deployed and managed in the DevOps world. It enables organizations to embrace the benefits of containers while providing automation, scalability, and reliability. By adopting container orchestration, you can achieve faster deployments, improved resource utilization, and more resilient applications, all of which contribute to the successful implementation of DevOps practices.

And this is only part of the full list of benefits.

Think of it.

Shift-Left and Shift-Right Testing

Security became an integral part of the DevOps process, focusing on implementing security measures early in the development cycle (shift-left approach) to prevent vulnerabilities. Shift-left testing involves introducing testing practices earlier in the software development lifecycle (SDLC). It aims to proactively catch issues and vulnerabilities, leading to faster feedback loops and reduced costs. Shift-left testing enables early bug detection, continuous feedback and test automation.

In turn, the shift-right approach focuses on testing in production to gather insights and improve overall product quality. It involves monitoring the application's performance, usability, and stability in real-world scenarios. The shift-right testing includes real-world validation, performance and user experience monitoring, continuous improvement, and AIOps and Observability.

Implementing shift-left and shift-right testing approaches gives you a comprehensive testing strategy throughout the entire SDLC. Therefore, you can detect defects early with shift-left testing and continuously improve and optimize with shift-right testing.

So where is it all going?

We bet that even Nostradamus couldn't answer this question. However, you shouldn't be a great predictor to see that AI, microservices and cloud are gaining momentum and, thus, will stay in trend over the next few years.

By embracing the appropriate trends, tools, and technologies aligned with the projects, you can enhance your capabilities, boost productivity and deliver superior results within your organization. As more companies of all sizes adopt these practices, DevOps will continue to flourish in the future of technology.

If you are in doubt or excited about learning more, feel free to contact us.