When it comes to helping small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) achieve their goals faster, adopting DevOps is an effective strategy for success. The DevOps approach to software development helps SMBs accelerate the delivery of high-quality software by making it easier to write, test, secure, and deploy code. Through DevOps automation, repetitive and manual tasks are performed with little or no human interaction—to streamline the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC).
People use DevOps automation tools to automate SDLC tasks and improve collaboration among software development (Dev) and operations (Ops) teams. There are DevOps tools for planning and collaboration, automating software builds, automating code changes, monitoring applications, and including security testing and compliance in the development process.
Because DevOps combines people, processes, and tools to continually provide value to customers, it’s considered a holistic business practice. The concept that everyone is responsible for a product and should work together as a team throughout the product’s lifecycle is a core DevOps concept. Businesses adopt the DevOps methodology to break down siloes between product development, IT operations, quality assurance, and security.
Whenever possible, DevOps encourages the automation of manual tasks. DevOps automation increases team productivity, reduces the possibility of human error, and supports standardization. It also gives people more time to focus on business-critical activities that add value to the SMB.
DevOps automation is important for SMBs because it helps them continually provide value to their customers and increases their confidence in the applications they build. SMBs that successfully adopt DevOps automation often realize big gains in their ability to deliver reliable software faster and find that it’s easier to scale their services. This modern approach to software development encourages everyone who works in the DevOps environment to continuously collaborate to improve quality and speed the delivery of value to users and customers.
Because certain tasks and workflows are automated, the SMB team has more time to focus on improving and building the software and the infrastructure that runs the software. DevOps automation also helps improve the consistency of configurations, security checks and testing, and creates a pipeline that fosters value throughout the SDLC, from planning through coding, testing, and production.
DevOps automation tools work for businesses by automating repetitive tasks at every stage of the SDLC to improve security, increase scalability, and speed software delivery. For example, in traditional software development practices, multiple changes are typically bundled into large releases. As a result, customers often wait a long time for software updates. In contrast, DevOps automation tools facilitate incremental changes that are easier to build and test and can ship as soon as they are ready.
When the development team commits code changes to a project, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) automate the build, test, and release pipeline. These tools help improve application security, maximize code quality, and minimize human error.
Automated and non-automated security-related tests take place at each stage, including coding builds, deployments, and production. This helps DevOps teams identify and fix vulnerabilities before they make it to production and reduces the need for distinct security reviews that delay code deployments.
Continuous monitoring tools are also a core part of a successful DevOps practice. They help detect any potential issues before the software is shipped to production and surface any issues that show up in production. Through a series of automated tests, continuous monitoring tools evaluate new code, application performance, and the underlying infrastructure to provide an automated, 360-degree view of all systems. In addition, containerization tools help ensure that the system works as expected, regardless of the infrastructure, by packaging applications with their code, runtime, system tools, and libraries.
Every business enterprise has unique cultural, process, and structural requirements, DevOps objectives, challenges, and opportunities to consider when choosing a DevOps automation tool. It’s important to compare DevOps solutions before deciding which tool will work.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to assessing and comparing tools, so making a list of priorities is the first step. Integration with the existing technology stack, programming languages, version control systems, and third-party tools, as well as future technologies a business is considering are other key factors, along with:
Every business wants to achieve its goals faster. Adopting DevOps automation can streamline the entire SDLC and enable true automation for business. A DevOps approach to the development and delivery of high-quality software makes it easier to write, test, secure, and deploy code.
DevOps automation tools give businesses a competitive edge by improving agility and collaboration, speeding time to market, enhancing code quality and security, boosting compliance, and driving scalability and flexibility. By meeting the needs of diverse teams within an organization while realizing time and cost savings, improving reliability, and reducing downtime, DevOps is an effective strategy for success.
Compare DevOps solutions to start using DevOps automation tools for your business.
Teams utilize tools and build custom toolchains to facilitate DevOps automation across every phase of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC).
The term DevOps combines the words “development” and “operations.” DevOps is a philosophy and set of business practices that increases collaboration and development velocity to deliver software to market faster and more efficiently.
Automation is the application of technology to perform tasks without human involvement.
In DevOps automation, repetitive and manual tasks are performed with little or no human interaction to streamline the entire SDLC.
An example of a DevOps automation tool is when the development team commits code changes to a project using continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) to automate the build, test, and release pipeline. These tools help facilitate incremental changes and improve application security, maximize code quality, and minimize human error. Multiple processes can be automated in DevOps using specific tools and toolkits.
In DevOps, testing is automated using tools for basic unit tests, integration tests, end-to-end regression testing, and production tests applied at key points in the SDLC. Some tools simultaneously test builds across several operating systems and runtime versions. Automated testing tools might also include monitoring and alerts that integrate with chat applications to notify developers when a test fails.
Typical DevOps processes that are automated include code integration, testing, deployment, configuration management, monitoring and alerting, release, change, and log management, security scanning, backup and recovery, compliance and governance, and workflow automation.
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