What is DevOps?
Is there actually a staple answer for this? Well… in my (Afiya’s) experience, DevOps is not a skill, but a working culture which combines software engineering with the operations within IT in regards to websites, applications, software etc.
This is why in most cases you will find that DevOps engineers originate from a Software Engineering background or an Infrastructure Engineering background, but also within the team you can find System Administrators, Business Analysts, Infrastructure Engineers, and Developers etc. These backgrounds combined with the leap into the cloud, working on serverless platforms, we have found DevOps!
Ultimately, DevOps is about improving the efficiency of the development and operations within IT by combining the planning, coding, building, testing, packaging, releasing and configurations with continuous deployment, operations and monitoring.
With that said, a typical DevOps set up does vary. This can be depending on the company and team size.
AWS is currently the global cloud dominator, followed by Microsoft Azure and now Google Cloud is also increasing its market presence. In addition to these key technologies within DevOps, other important ones include; Docker, Jenkins, Ansible, Terraform, Chef, Puppet, Ruby, Bash, Linux, Octopus… The list is endless!
My research tells me, however, that at the top of the list of key skills, the most sought after ones are AWS/ Azure and Kubernetes. Kubernetes is an open-source system used for automating deployments, scaling containerisation. Of course, this is only scratching the surface, Typically, the types of companies using DevOps include big financial and insurance corporations, such as Lloyds Banking, Hiscox, Capital one and Aviva. In addition, companies with a major online presence such as PhotoBox, uSwitch and Yodel. Many digital start-up companies are scooting past the whole “building the separate IT teams and incorporating specialist engineers and DevOps teams from the get go.
So, why is DevOps important? In my opinion, DevOps and what it is can still be considered as a very grey area. Hence, we all have such differing opinions on it and its success. Truthfully, DevOps has come very far within the market and still has a long way to go. With many new emerging technologies, especially within the cloud working their way up, it is becoming increasingly competitive. It is a booming market right now! This is also why it is so contract dominated!
DevOps in the market right now is great because engineers can work independently which helps to progress applications much quicker too. Continuous deployments and automations also reduce risk and improve quality, which ultimately saves the businesses money!
