Like other components of IT, many managed technical professional service providers are now offering DevOps as a managed service. DevOps as a Service moves the traditional collaboration of DevOps to the cloud where many processes are automated using stackable virtual development tools. Moving an application to the cloud makes for a good time to evaluate DevOps tools in the cloud, including tools used to build, test, and deploy code.

If you’re familiar with DevOps, you’ll know that it’s primarily a cultural shift in an organization, where the development and operations teams work in tandem to release faster. Successful implementation of DevOps includes automating processes to fail often and fail fast, and to ultimately release software faster than a traditional waterfall development process. Creating a collaborative DevOps environment makes it easier for both your technical team and operations team to test software, integrate and synchronize between workflows.

What is DevOps as a Service?

Because the purpose of DevOps is to facilitate change management, emphasizing people more than processes or tools, there’s a common argument that DevOps as a Service isn’t truly DevOps. With DevOps as a Service, all development tools are hosted in the cloud to ensure that developers use a common toolset and that every action is tracked. This makes it easier to have a provider assist with your DevOps process.

DevOps as a Service provides:

  • Assessment: road map of your process, recommend tools to automate deployment cycles across delivery infrastructure
  • Automation: DevOps engineers work to automate your delivery cycle and ensure deployments and rollbacks are automatic
  • Management: DevOps engineers assist the core IT team with a fully functioning automated delivery pipeline and will help adapt your automated deployment cycles to changes

Advantages of DevOps as a Service

Of course, there are benefits from cloud adoption, but advantages of DevOps as a Service also include:

  • Ease of Collaboration: With development tools in the cloud, it’s easier to collaborate with users anywhere. And with collaboration as a key to the DevOps philosophy, then this is a huge advantage!
  • Faster Testing and Deployment: Generally, when organizations use cloud services, it enables them to increase their release frequency. With more computing power and data storage, the cloud makes the process easier and faster.
  • Better Documentation and Quality Control: Using cloud services is more data-driven so everyone on the team uses the same dataset. This leads to better documentation and quality control.
  • Coexists with Internal DevOps: DevOps as a Service doesn’t mean you don’t have to have an internal DevOps deployment process. It simply makes it easier to offload different parts of a project for better collaboration and quick turnaround.
  • It’s Built IT: Many of the leading cloud providers have created DevOps tools within their features that work towards continuous delivery, and the leading DevOps tools work within these cloud providers to help you get the results you need.

Disadvantages of DevOps as a Service

There are some disadvantages to be considered as well, including:

  • Expertise Needed: Outsourcing your DevOps infrastructure requires a certain level of development expertise. You’ll need an in-depth understanding of integration, infrastructure and how to orchestrate workflow. Of course, you could also hire experts to help match the tools with the processes.
  • Security Concerns: Often, security isn’t addressed as much as it should be when it comes to DevOps. Using cloud services can create security risks that you wouldn’t necessarily have internally; however, with care, security can be addressed.

Often, partnering with the right DevOps as a Service provider can help you gain more DevOps expertise without disrupting your existing infrastructure. If you are considering making a switch to a DevOps strategy or changing your current strategy, DevOps as a Service can expedite the time to deployment and give you more options when you develop new applications.

The right DevOps as a Service provider can give you greater agility and access to more DevOps expertise. Our team can help. Read more about our DevOps practice and how we’ve helped other clients.