The COVID-19 pandemic has had a tremendous impact on the speed of cloud adoption. One of its obvious manifestations appears to be the accelerated implementation of outsourced development and operations (DevOps) by companies worldwide.
Recent statistics reveal that the overall DevOps market has been currently undergoing exponential growth with forecasts expecting it to reach as much as $12.85 billion by 2025. Simultaneously, more and more businesses have opted for outsourcing DevOps than for introducing it in-house by building a DevOps team.
So, what is DevOps and what does it bring to companies? Why is outsourcing DevOps gaining such widespread recognition? How do the in-house adoption of DevOps and DevOps-as-a-Service compare and what are their pros and cons?
Let us jump in and see what it is all about.
Why choose DevOps?
In brief, DevOps is a set of practices combining software development and IT operations with the primary goal of improving software deployment. Thus, it addresses the gap between developers and IT operations to facilitate continuous integration into software production and to ensure better agility. Often, DevOps aims at automating the code from development to production.
Companies that have been introducing DevOps usually pursue reducing software development waste of all kinds, ensuring faster product delivery, achieving higher flexibility, and minimizing the risk of failure in the event of changes. Ultimately, they prioritize monitoring and security.
If you are keen on exploring this further, you can take a look at our devops category.
What is DevOps-as-a-Service?
Having briefly introduced the DevOps concept, we can easily presume that its adoption in-house normally entails consequences for our established business model, way of work, and probably, business culture.
As this sometimes may be resource-demanding, an increasing share of companies (especially small companies and start-ups) nowadays go directly for the option of DevOps-as-a-Service. That is, they outsource DevOps rather than adopt it in-house.
Wondering if this applies to every business case? Well, not exactly but let’s cast some light on how the outsourcing and in-house models compare.
DevOps outsourcing vs DevOps in-house?
There is never one-solution-fits-all that can work equally well for all types of businesses. In addition, each model hides its advantages and disadvantages. Let’s see what these commonly involve.
Generally, building a DevOps team in-house is a model followed by larger companies with established corporate culture and procedures. Often, they would like to have complete control over the new DevOps team and processes at a regular predictable cost. Yet, the other side of the coin is that this may also require additional expense for office perks and benefits, longer time to set up infrastructure and processes, efficiency issues due to teams’ involvement with other office tasks, etc.
On the other hand, a remote DevOps team is normally the way to go for smaller growing companies. It is a proven method to ensure access to top IT talent at a reasonable cost, higher motivation and lower turnover of experts, enhanced speed delivery and project management, flexible work volume with an opportunity to always scale it, etc. On the downside, some complex projects may cost more, the service may at times appear unreliable, there may be other challenges associated with the way the new DevOps culture interacts with the existing office culture, etc.
5 Key Benefits of DevOps-as-a-Service
Based on our research and practice, we can recommend that you consider the following top 5 benefits that DevOps-as-a-Service brings to companies:
- Ensures immediate access to top IT talent and good expertise at a better cost
- Brings new DevOps performance-oriented culture onboard, often with a new inflow of motivated workers
- Provides greater freedom for finding the best fit for your expert needs, especially when compared with hiring an in-house employee
- Allows for full control and monitoring over technology costs and issues
- Offers shorter development cycles, better release speed, reduced overall cost, etc.
As these are some of the most common advantages that companies experience, your specific benefits will naturally depend on your unique business circumstances. If you are willing to discuss them from a DevOps perspective, do not be shy to get in touch.
How to choose the best DevOps model?
Likewise, your best choice of a DevOps model will also depend on your unique situation. Yet, you may approach the issue by trying to analyze the individual pros and cons of both models against the following set of essential questions:
- What is your primary goal of introducing DevOps?
- What is the predominant type of DevOps projects you are willing to set in place?
- Is it going to be easy to embrace DevOps into your company culture?
- What is the price model that works best for you?
- Are there any specific benefits or downsides you are particularly concerned about?
Choosing a reliable DevOps partner usually presents a chance to discuss all of this in detail. Yet, if you need further background reading, please see here.
Conclusion
The overall value of DevOps to business operations goes without doubt and this has been proven by the increased speed of its adoption.Should you be interested in learning more about the practical steps of outsourcing DevOps, do not hesitate to drop us a line.
