More than 90% of organisations polled by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) say they are using DevOps practices in some capacity, yet they only support production applications only a third of the time.

The study, titled ‘DevOps/Continuous Delivery Tooling: Launchpad for the Digital Enterprise’, looks at the current state of software delivery and related tooling and summarises the results. The company argues that integrating and sharing metrics and data between diverse toolsets, via APIs, integration hubs, or both – need to be central to making product selections.

The primary focus areas for digital business initiatives include customer satisfaction, ‘using technology to match competitors’ digital presence’, and ‘faster time to innovation’, according to the report, although there were ‘significant’ differences in responses among small, medium and enterprise businesses.

The rubric sets out the rationale for the report. “Yesterday’s toolsets and support practices – in which tools relied heavily on human expertise and manual processes – are no longer viable,” the company notes. “At the same time, designing, developing, deploying and supporting complex modern application environments requires collaborative decision-making supported by a new level of cross-functional skills, knowledge, and judgment.

“Surmounting these challenges to embrace the requirements of a new era requires changes to mindsets, skill sets, and tooling.”

This aligns with various pieces of research around DevOps. According to a study from Sumo Logic back in March, more than two thirds of enterprises either plan to adopt DevOps or are already doing so, while in the same month Quali found that almost half of applications in traditional environments were considered complex for cloud.

“As the pace of business continues to accelerate, coordination across DevOps processes, practices, and tools becomes increasingly important,” said Julie Craig, research director of application management at EMA. “This research provides valuable insights into the ways in which high performing IT organisations are accelerating delivery of key business services and, in doing so, impacting the business bottom line.”