Hybrid cloud is rapidly becoming essential to today’s information technology processes. This is why hybrid cloud risk management has become the keystone to many modern corporate strategies. To effectively manage this shift, leading enterprises are reorganizing how the business side of IT is accomplished. When this reality is coupled with the rising cost of poor cybersecurity, decisions often rise to the board level.
The five key traits your burgeoning DevOps team needs to have
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It’s the buzzword of the moment. It’s growing so fast in popularity according to Gartner that a quarter of Global 2000 organisations will deploy it by the end of this year. So what exactly is DevOps?
At the heart of DevOps are four crucial elements: speed, quality, control and cost. Speed is fundamental to competitive execution and market positioning. Quality is vital to successful implementation and long-term viability. Control, the command of data use, security, access and process is crucial to safe operations. And cost as we all know is a key element of nearly all business decisions.
As Tony Bradley, editor in chief of TechSpective, explains, “DevOps really is more about the culture than the tools and technology. A group of traditional developers and IT engineers who understand and embrace DevOps culture can be successful, whereas a team of DevOps experts experienced with Chef, Puppet, Docker, and other DevOps tools that doesn’t accept and adapt to the cooperative, collaborative nature of DevOps culture is more or less doomed to failure.”
While it is a common assumption that implementing DevOps is a primarily technical process, we see here that the cultural aspects and adjustments are equally as important. Every DevOps team need to possess certain traits in order to successfully tackle this cultural shift.
Communication is key
Up until fairly recently, IT professionals had strictly defined roles and responsibilities that allowed them to work more independently than collaboratively. As a result, communication skills weren’t a priority for when putting together an IT team.
However, as rapid deployment and newer, streamlined processes have emerged, communication has become key to making smooth transitions from one phase of the project to the next. Enforcing good communication can lead to better results in a shorter amount of time and ultimately help organisations save money.
There’s no ‘i’ in team
Flexibility is key in effectively implementing a DevOps methodology in an organisation. For those jumping on the DevOps bandwagon, the phrase “it’s not my job” shouldn’t be spoken. While it’s common for organisations to experience a clash between development and operations teams when first implementing a DevOps strategy, successful interdepartmental integration requires collaboration in order for the team to reach their end goal–satisfying the needs of the business.
Think of implementing DevOps as working with a team of teams. While each team brings different skills to the table, it is important for all teams to provide support to deliver the most powerful results as effectively and quickly possible.
Welcoming change
We’ve all heard the saying that the only constant in life is change, whether it involves something as small as adjusting our daily commute or as big as a new career. And like everything else, the implementation of DevOps brings about a large cultural shift for an organisation.
Gartner analyst George Spafford recommends implementing a cultural change programme to make team members aware of the end goals. To begin, he encourages developing a small pilot plan to test the waters initially by deploying tests and taking careful note of what works and what doesn’t. It’s important to know your team what works best to motivate the group to keep them positive and interested. Laying out such a road map and embracing the cultural change will result in a more focused team that will optimise the outcome.
Don’t be afraid of failure
If you’ve been doing your DevOps research, you’ll know that there are just about as many articles on DevOps failures as there are successes. To be on a DevOps team you need to accept that failures can happen, but you can’t fear it.
According to a Gartner study, 75% of enterprise IT departments will have tried to create a bimodal capacity by 2018. However, less than 50% of them will reap the benefits that new methodologies like DevOps promise. Willing to fail and being patient is crucial for a team to get the most out of their DevOps efforts.
Sustain the enthusiasm
DevOps is here and it’s the next big thing. You’re probably getting tired of hearing that by now. A successful DevOps team needs people that want to make a difference with the excitement to drive a significant business transformation. This involves the willingness to listen to customer feedback and adjust accordingly. Since consumers are the main driver on continual software updates and releases, it is crucial to be interested in what they have to say and be more than willing to be accommodating. There will be many highs and lows, and despite processes breaking and things not going according to plan, people involved in DevOps need to maintain continuous enthusiasm for the journey ahead of them.
With these five traits, your team will be able to successfully implement a DevOps strategy and navigate the minefield of cultural change that comes along with it.
Network Device Management | @CloudExpo #BigData #SDN #IoT #M2M #API
Today, “network device management” means different things to different people, and the reality is that IT organizations do it, or at least do what they consider network device management to be, to vastly varying degrees, including some who do none at all (hopefully this isn’t you).
At least part of the reason network device management has become such an ambiguous thing is because what we consider to be a network device is constantly evolving. At one point, network devices were largely just routers and switches. Back then, even if one added end-user workstations into the mix, things were fairly simple.
Advance to a Proactive I and O Organization in Four Steps | @CloudExpo #Coud
Advancing I&O maturity increases the value that I&O delivers. This essential piece of Gartner research shares four easy steps to advance your I&O organization including:
Expand your organizational vision beyond technology stewardship
Identify the limitations of your I&O organization’s current structure, and focus on addressing them with a new model
Evaluate the typical changes involved in advancing your organization, and adapt them to your organizational model
Align structural changes to your specific business situations and desired outcomes
Composability and Integration | @DevOpsSummit #DevOps #Microservices
Our guest on the podcast this week is JP Morgenthal, Global Solutions Executive at CSC. We discuss the architecture of microservices and how to overcome the challenge of making different tools work together. We learn about the importance of hiring engineers who can compose services into an integrated system.
Parallels Remote Application Server is a Finalist in the European IT & Software Excellence Awards!
European IT & Software Excellence Awards Parallels Remote Application Server, a leading desktop and application virtualization solution, has been selected as a finalist in the DataCenter Solution of the Year category of the European IT & Software Excellence Awards. As the European IT & Software Excellence Awards are renowned for their commitment to celebrating world […]
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NASA Chose @AvereSystems to Launch Its Data onto AWS Cloud | @CloudExpo #Cloud
SYS-CON Events announced today that Avere Systems, a leading provider of enterprise storage for the hybrid cloud, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 18th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.
Avere Systems has announced that NASA has selected Avere to help consolidate legacy storage and move many of its datasets to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. Avere will be supporting the Ames Research Center, NASA’s Silicon-Valley field center, which has led NASA in conducting world-class research and development. Breakthrough research conducted at the Ames Research Center includes advancements in supercomputing, NexGen air transportation, missions for low-Earth orbit and the moon, lunar science and advancing human-technology interaction.
How APIs Make or Break Success in the Digital World By @RyanPinkham | @CloudExpo #Cloud
The State of API 2016 Report revealed some important findings about the growth, opportunities, challenges, and processes for the API industry in 2016.
Among our most revealing findings, we discovered:
Growth in the industry: 1 in 5 respondents began developing APIs in the last two years alone.
Mobile and IoT are fueling growth: 54% of API providers expect mobile to drive the most growth; 44% expect IoT to drive the most growth.
Concerns over security: Security is the #1 challenge API providers want to see solved, with 41% of providers citing security as a top challenge.
Focus on quality: 85% of respondents say that API quality is either very important or extremely important to their organization.
You can find these findings and more of the key takeaways from the State of API 2016 Report in the infographic below. You’ll also find high profile examples of how the findings of the report have already played out in the real world for companies like Netflix, Salesforce, Amazon, and Facebook.
Solving Monitoring Challenges in a Fast-Growing Cloud Infrastructure | @CloudExpo #Cloud
OneCloud Systems provides managed services for the cloud including 24/7 monitoring, server and database setup, administration, and website migration. Launched by senior architects, developers and system administrators, OneCloud Systems enables customers to tap into the full value of the cloud by providing innovative technology architecture, proven infrastructure and reliable services. As an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Consulting Partner, the OneCloud team has deep expertise across the Amazon portfolio and knows how to leverage the AWS cloud to bring value to clients.
Docker buys Conductant to catalyse coding development
Container technology pioneer Docker has bought start up Conductant, best known for creating the Aurora strand of the Apache Mesos clustering system. Conductant’s software is used to catalyse faster development of large scale code.
Announcing the acquisition on its website Docker spokesman Solomon Hykes placed more emphasis on the talent, rather than the technology, that is being brought in with the take over of an early stage start up. Welcoming the Conductant ‘team’ to the Docker ‘family’ Hykes outlined the contributions that founders Bill Farner, David Chung and John Sirois made to operating and scaling production systems at Google, Twitter and Zynga.
Farna, who created the Aurora Project, will lead the process of integrating the clustering technology into the fabric of its container software. Docker’s expansion policy is to buy emerging software tool makers and integrate them into its container software core, according to Hykes. In January BCN reported how Docker has acquired Unikernel Systems in order to channel its hypervisor and unikernel experience into the development of Docker’s container systems. “We believe our job is integrating these technologies in tools that are easy to use and help people create new things. We did this for Linux containers, to help make applications more portable,” wrote Hykes.
Aurora, an extension of the Apache Mesos clustering system, is specifically designed for hyper scale production environments. Hykes claimed it is recognized as the most scalable and operationally-robust component of the Mesos stack, which in turn helps to create the conditions for operations-driven development (ODD). The experiences of the Conductant team, operating global scale clouds for Google, Twitter and Zyng, forced them to develop new techniques for rapid development. Bill Farner’s team at Twitter built Aurora to automate massive server farms that could be managed by handful of engineers.
Docker now plans to incorporate the best ideas from Aurora into Docker Swarm, which allows for any app to go on any infrastructure on any scale, and integrate Aurora as an optional component of the official Docker stack. One option is to integrate Aurora with Docker Swarm to form a powerful large-scale web operations stack.
While Swarm is designed to be the standard base layer to scale all kinds of applications, Aurora is optimized for large-scale consumer apps reaching hundreds of millions of users. “By making two of the most popular open-source infrastructure projects interoperate better, we believe both communities will benefit,” said Hykes.