The year 2017, declared by Forrester as the year of DevOps, was important for the movement. Throughout the year, many organizations picked up on DevOps implementation in parts or as whole and at the end, Forrester has predicted 2018 as the “The Year of Enterprise DevOps”.

According to their report from 2017, enterprises have already shifted their focus to implementing DevOps for a scale from understanding the very concept. In fact, as per their survey, over 50% of the companies have already transitioned to the “implemented and expanding to organizational scale” stage in their DevOps maturity levels.

Here are a few trends that would push DevOps as organizational culture agenda further.

DevOps Pipeline Automation: It is the axle for any successful DevOps implementation. Thorough automation and continuous integration are the building blocks for any successful DevOps structure. But when it comes to the actual implementation, many enterprises think about automation of individual fragments of Dev and Ops. While this deconstruction is effective in its own ways, the concept of continuous integration often proves to be cumbersome to the point of being lost in the individual process cycles.

DevOps pipeline automation is gaining, and expected to gather immense momentum in this year, not just because of the proliferation of tools but also the shift in the enterprises’ understanding of the concept. Pipeline automation thus enables the organization to inherently adopt continuous integration cycles as the entire process in one big orchestration of all the chunks of automation across the lifecycle.

Dev-Sec-Ops: DevOps essentially is a conglomeration of a lot of project development processes tied into a big bundle. So, with greater power, comes the greater need to secure the assets individually and as a whole. Security in silos in a DevOps environment would result in a lot of time, cost and process inefficiencies. As organizations dive deeper into a more integrated DevOps implementation, they would need the ideology of DevSecOps- “everyone is responsible for security”.

To make the case for the proliferation of DevSecOps in 2018, Gartner has revealed some key observations on “How to Seamlessly Integrate Security into DevOps”. According to the world-famous analyst:

  • By 2019, more than 70% of enterprises would have incorporated some form of automated security in their DevOps structure.
  • By the same year, the adoption of DevSecOps initiatives, especially in version control, would have grown to 60% from a mere 5% in 2016.

The year 2018 will actually see the implementations- such as security bases from the very beginning of development, use of custom code, increased adoption of containers in the DevOps environment- in the mainstream enterprise DevOps markets.

Infrastructure Automation with Legacy Systems: One of the core building blocks of the DevOps ecosystem is the Infrastructure. The rate at which DevOps’ software abilities grew over the past decade and the adoption across the markets has left several enterprises at cross roads in implementing DevOps with their legacy systems. With growing adoption of cloud services as an integral part of everyday operations, the complexity becomes humongous, especially for enterprises that do not have a higher risk appetite.

In 2018, enterprises will depend greater on the market to come up with innovative and cost-effective infrastructure automation and PaaS solutions that would promise a minimal cost and operation burden.

DevOps for Databases: One of the critical areas of project management that still seems unperturbed by the automation wave is Database Management. The very value of “data” and the innate complexity that forms the basis of its management often stops the enterprises from making that monumental shift in the way databases are operated in the organizations; till date, there are many enterprises that still rely on manual codes by designated DBAs.

The big crackdown that DevOps promises in the Database Management section is in the process of systematic automation and continuous integration. When implemented right, DevOps for databases can assure any enterprise of constant and timely update of their database without any major hiccups to business-as-usual. The gaping inadequacy in DevOps methods in DBMS- a staggering 64% have said a NO to continuous delivery in database according a report by DBMastero-  potentially boosts the market in this segment in 2018.

In Conclusion,

Invariable of where the bet is in terms of DevOps trends for 2018, the underlying theme seems to be pushing towards a complete and wholesome automation of every single project component. With the industry swaying in favour of DevOps as an organizational mantra and an accelerated growth in specific DevOps tools, 2018 is well poised to meet and excel the expectations of DevOps enthusiasts all over.

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