Global organizations have recently been leveraging DevOps to boost the speed of high-quality products. DevOps teams all over the world are trying to automate every small step with the help of continuous integration, continuous delivery, automated deployments, IaC, etc. Although automation has opened multiple doors and clarified the benefits of DevOps, the non-collaborative tools in their DevOps toolchain made it a stressful task riddled with technical complexities. Right when automation seemed to have reached its boundaries, DevOps orchestration has undoubtedly become the next logical step.  

Basics of DevOps orchestration 

DevOps orchestration can help an organization automate several sets of independent tasks that assist in streamlining and optimizing the whole workflow. With orchestration in DevOps, you can significantly deduct issues in production, improve the efficiency of automation tools, boost time to market, and increase the ROI of DevOps investments.  

What’s the difference between automation and orchestration? 

Although the two terms are quite often used interchangeably and they also have a few overlapping aspects automation and orchestration are different in the DevOps ecosystem. DevOps Automation is the process of automating an independent manual task or a few tasks that are related and repeatable.  

However, orchestration is more of a process that automatically streamlines and manages multiple automated tasks. This creates a dynamic DevOps workflow while combining all the automated elements in the DevOps lifecycle such as continuous integration, deployment, delivery, and testing. On the other hand, automation is the process that automates these individual elements later combined through orchestration.  

While automation is considered to digitize mundane day to day tasks, orchestration is the automation of a group of automated tasks. Orchestration involves dynamic elements and requires advanced logic. These include correct decision-making based on the outputs from an automated task, adapting to evolving circumstances/conditions, and segregating tasks into steps and actions.  

Why investing in DevOps orchestration is a smart choice? 

As DevOps teams need to navigate between departments, a solution for intelligent tool piloting is crucial. They need orchestration tools in DevOps that have the capacity to mix several automated components from different DevOps toolkits.  

DevOps team can keep using their current automation technologies while cooperating under a broad framework unifying everything into a single process by investing in DevOps orchestration. The following run-through discusses 6 main reasons to invest in DevOps orchestration and why it is the next step after automation.  

Better release quality like never before  

Orchestration includes quality control procedures such as approvals, scheduling, security testing, and automatic status reporting in the workflow. These steps help eliminate errors and reduce the time to market for the end user. Orchestration will also help you increase engagement and improve the accuracy of the procedures.   

Cost reduction from IT and human resources 

DevOps can reduce the number of IT staff needed and the infrastructure investment expenses reducing costs quite effectively. Moreover, businesses can increase the footprint of their cloud services to have a better grip over their allocation of costs in the long run.  

Improved speed for the automation process 

DevOps orchestration tools ensure quick and effortless delivery of fresh builds into production by decreasing the labor required for recurring processes. Orchestration gives the team more scope to focus on vital tasks and decision-making instead of working on pipeline construction.  

An extra boost to the pace of releases  

DevOps orchestration requires a substantial amount of automation. It also needs the automatic flow of software through specific procedures like testing and the various stages of the release pipeline. As the software is delivered to the final user faster, the teams can now dedicate this time to their next project. This eliminates the wastage of time over manual tasks and fast-tracks the program to the next step in the flow.  

Transparent build  

It is often difficult to establish clarity and openness throughout a project when the responsibilities and information are categorized. However, with orchestration, you can coordinate all tasks, centralize all the information/data relevant to the processes, and communicate change/progress to key stakeholders.  

Cross-team collaboration and unified communications  

A platform that can consolidate and constantly update all activities can give a strong boost to effective communication between the operation and development teams. This helps to keep the teams in sync, works to improve unified communications, and therefore, enhances productivity.  

When is it important to implement DevOps orchestration? 

Logically, you can implement the process of orchestration once you have completed implementing automation in the DevOps lifecycle or when you are still in the process of implementing it. Once you get successful results from automating a local solution, you can collect the best practices to orchestrate the continuity into a strong process. This is when it’d seem like automation has reached its limitations, making it one of the most ideal moments to implement orchestration maximizing the efficiency of your program.  

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