Natural pair: Cloud and DevOps

Digital innovation Economy

What is the relationship between cloud computing and DevOps: is DevOps really just "it for the cloud"? Can only execute devops in the cloud? Can only run the cloud through DevOps? The answer to these three questions is in the negative. The cloud and DevOps are independent of each other, but they complement each other by delivering business value through it.

To really understand the relationship between cloud and devops, it would be helpful to take a step back from the big background of how the two are happening. The evolution of clouds and DevOps is a response to three basic social transformations. First, we are experiencing the evolution from a product economy to a service economy. People emphasize experience more than concrete things. Although the company still produces a variety of products, but they are packaged in the service. The price of a new BMW car includes routine maintenance. Cadillac also integrates OnStar services into its vehicles. The iphone's advantage comes mainly from its integration with icloud and itunes.

The transition from product to service also affects software delivery. Previously, when a development company completed a software product, it was delivered directly to the user for operation. With the advent of cloud computing, most companies are also responsible for running the software for their customers while building the software.

Software as a service is happening at all levels of the IT industry. On the ground floor, infrastructure is the service delivery of virtual machines, networks, and storage on demand. Platform is the database, cache, workflow engine, and application container that service delivery needs to change. Software is the business function that service delivery on demand. At each level, the supplier allows the customer to purchase the corresponding service according to the demand, then pays the expense according to the expense, but also gives the management responsibility to the supplier.

Second, the business environment of the 21st century forced companies to shift their focus from stability and effectiveness to agility and innovation. The pace of change has been accelerating. Kodak for 100 years before he began to face its weakness in the market. Microsoft, on the other hand, felt its status shaken only 30 years later. In just a few years, Apple's title as the world's most valuable company has been questioned.

In order to demonstrate their resilience to the market, businesses need to change the way they work. They need to shorten the work cycle, increase the frequency of deliveries, and adopt an attitude that supports continuous experimentation. Social media are shifting the dominance from producers to consumers. Marketing also shifts from a behavioral-driven process to a response to behavior. When a company is transformed into a focus on individual employees, companies need to encourage creative responses to minimize the waste that is preventing them from moving forward.

Third, the digital dimension has begun to penetrate completely to the physical level. Is your car made up of metal and plastic or Pandora's music service client? Is your office building an HVAC system in fluid dynamics, a marvel or a marvel of large data? Is your local library a place to find books on a real bookshelf, or a place to look online? The answers to these three questions are of course doubly positive.

Data penetration has greatly increased the stakes in it. We have come to the point where all our day-to-day actions are inseparable from digital technology. Any one of the company's existence needs to depend on it. It cannot bear the consequences of its failure to provide a compelling platform for continuing business.

Embrace agility

What does the transition have to do with clouds or devops? The cloud is a direct response to agile needs. Initially, it was thought that the cloud was a way to save money by shifting capital spending (CAPEX) to operating expenses (OpEx). Now, people find that the real value of the cloud is to reduce the waste that can hinder speed, or let us lose focus. Only a handful of companies see data center operations as part of their core value proposition. Cloud services allow IT departments to free their attention from heavy day-to-day work, such as managing hardware or patching up the operating system, so that they have the time and effort to create value that is more business-specific.

From the product economy to the service economy, along with the data intrusion, this means that the company becomes a software service provider, but also to become consumers. Now, I have 99% of all banking transactions done through bank websites or mobile apps. I will judge the brand by the quality of the data transaction. It also evaluates the quality of these transactions through functionality, operability and delivery capabilities. At these three points, I expect the quality to be seamlessly integrated.

Cloud provides greater flexibility in business by making IT infrastructure more flexible. It allows the company to establish a data-related service relationship with its customers. However, it is only one reason why it cloud the enterprise to adapt itself to the problem. For an IT enterprise, whether it is running an application on data center hardware or on a private or public cloud, it needs to be synchronized with business requirements rather than vice versa, allowing business requirements to be synchronized with it. Warehousing (Silo) organizations and various manual processes still produce a variety of waste, hindering the ability to deliver continuous updates and ongoing testing. Cumbersome, time-consuming, and innocuous change management processes also make life annoying and frustrating, forcing users and developers to look for ways to circumvent it.

It OPS organization is always unfortunately crowned with the nickname "Reject department (the Department of No)". In the past, frustrated business people also gave the nickname to the development team. The Agile development campaign has greatly enhanced the mutual trust between business and development. Although agility brings us a variety of new tastes, it also has its imperfections. In essence, Agile is an adjustment to development, making it easier to accept, rather than strengthening its resistance to change.

Functional and operable indivisibility

From the angle of devops, the most important meaning of software is the separation between function and operability. Let the user experience the whole, seamless link between them. Customers expect functional and operational quality while also expecting service providers to provide them with continuous updates on the quality platform.

These expectations require a completely different approach to software delivery. The separation of development from the operational dimension conflicts with the idea of being indivisible from the outside to the inside. function + operation is naturally corresponding to the development of + operational dimension. DevOps was born from this. DevOps represents the commitment to establish a mutual trust relationship between software and services, as well as the efforts made by Agile software as a product. Agile churches develop how to maintain the same speed and flexibility as business. DevOps, however, is trying to teach the operation and development to maintain the same speed and flexibility. The success of the 21st century requires a holistic approach to goals, perspectives, language and rhythm from marketing to operation.

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