DevOps trends 2023: Focusing on optimization rather than growth. Part 1

DevOps has proven to be an indisputable software engineering methodology for successful digital transformation. And getting deeply into the fresh reports about DevOps trends is an undeniable routine for every respectable IT expert.

The growing demand for fast application delivery, combined with the need for unified DevOps solutions and services among enterprises, is the main driver behind the evolution seen in the DevOps market. According to a recent market study, the DevOps market is expected to exceed $20 billion by 2026, adding 24.7% to the 2019 rate. Since DevOps promotes fast and reliable software development and delivery and improves quality and customer satisfaction, it, too, is continuously evolving to meet the changing demands of the corporate environment. Gartner’s annual global CIO survey, which polled over 2,000 CIOs, noted that their future technology plans will “remain focused on optimization rather than growth.”

With that in mind, let’s look at the future of DevOps and hot DevOps trends you should expect to see in 2023 and beyond.

Source: verifiedmarketresearch.com

DevOps trends 2023

 1. Cyber and information security promoting advanced DevSecOps

500 DevSecOps professionals in the U.S. say that almost three-quarters (73%) of organizations plan to increase investment in AppSec (application security) in 2023, according to research published by Invicti Security in Fall 2022. On the downside, the study also revealed that 97% of DevSecOps teams had ignored a real vulnerability at least once a month because they assumed it was a false positive. Frank Catucci, Invicti CTO, said that, unfortunately, many DevOps teams have been shipping code with known vulnerabilities for years, putting them under pressure to improve the security of new and already running production environments.

While cybersecurity experts may struggle to lobby for flawless applications in advance, at the very least, they should have the means to address flaws in respectable organizations in a comprehensive and timely manner. We know, and it’s simple logic, that it is easier to find and fix problems in simple applications with fewer code lines and frameworks, a more compact size, and modern languages. However, even if these properties are present, DevOps teams that use secure coding techniques such as frequent flaw scanning, integrating and automating security checks, and taking a broader view of application health are more likely to do better with their secure software development growth.

 2. Business logic + data analytics infused in DevOps.

Although DevOps has now existed for more than a decade, scores of companies still grapple with adopting it, typically getting stuck either in the early or middle stages of DevOps implementation. This is often because board-level decisions do not sufficiently empower the DevOps decision-makers to truly influence the quality, cost, speed, and uptake.

Without accurate insights, it is difficult to justify investing in capabilities or resources that will meet the precise digitalization needs of most organizations. A good idea would be to use data and analytics to continuously improve the performance of DevOps teams. Where DevOps stakeholders have a better understanding of the variables that affect investments, they will be in a better position to decide on the best practices/principles/solutions so that their teams can transform operations by, among others:

• Using value stream mapping (VSM) to find and simplify complex and bottlenecking processes.
• Optimizing workflows with business intelligence systems and data visualization technologies.
• Adopting cloud financial operations management methodology (FinOps) to optimize and reduce costs. FinOps, which brings together technology, finance, and business teams, allows us to strike a balance between cost, speed, and quality, promoting transparency and accountability in using cloud resources.

Source: gartner.com

 3. Spotlighting Low-Code/No-Code (LCNC) Applications and Platforms

According to a recent study, by 2024, LCNC platforms will be used in over 65% of application development settings worldwide. Low-code development platforms enable IT to quickly assemble new processes and build applications without researching, writing, and testing new scripts. Depending on the platform, a low-code development tool can also include monitoring, resource management, and advanced tools that help streamline DevOps. In the past, no-code tools were inflexible since they were based on rigid patterns, which meant that companies couldn’t easily change layouts, edit fonts and templates, or customize designs. Fortunately, this is no longer the case: more software vendors now offer drag-and-drop solutions that give app developers greater flexibility to create the apps they need.

LCNC solutions have changed DevOps since they:

• Reduce workloads and stress for professional developers, IT, and entire organizations.
• Allow developers to play a more strategic role in the enterprise.
• Speed up innovation.
• Offer new roles and opportunities.
• Enable more rapid feedback from actual customers, which is the key to success.

 4. Infrastructure as Code as an Evergreen DevOps trend

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is an evergreen trend in DevOps, highlighting infrastructure management and provisioning via complete automation. With IaC, which is also called Everything as Code (EaC), infrastructure is built automatically using structured documentation (code). It is a fundamental DevOps best practice to apply continuous monitoring, virtualization testing, and version control to the underlying code that directs the development and administration of your infrastructure.

When IaC is included in the software lifecycle of organizations, it plays a huge role in adopting DevOps practices since it aids knowledge sharing and greater collaboration between cloud environment teams and software development teams, facilitates the evolution of a common vocabulary and a common set of standards, thus inherently highlight its importance for DevOps.

 5. Stressing on Kubernetes and GitOps to improve DevOps processes

From an operational perspective, Kubernetes is an open source container orchestration platform that is likely to become even more mainstream in 2023 and beyond. In essence, GitOps is a practice that uses tools such as Git and Jenkins to automate a software delivery pipeline.

GitOps simplifies the work of the DevOps team by making it easy to continuously deliver/deploy new software artifacts to a Kubernetes cluster. In this way, GitOps can improve and accelerate DevOps practices in modern Kubernetes environments by uniting three core DevOps components in one formula.

DevOps + GitOps = IaC + MRs + CI/CD

Where:

• IaC – Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the practice of storing all infrastructure configuration as code in a Git repository as the single trusted source for infrastructure definitions.
• MR – GitOps uses merge requests (MRs) as the change mechanism for all infrastructure updates.
• CI/CD – GitOps automates infrastructure updates with a Git workflow using continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CI/CD). The CI/CD pipeline changes the environment when the new code is merged.

Implementing and managing Kubernetes requires plenty of internal expertise, given that neither Kubernetes nor GitOps is an all-inclusive PaaS (Platform as a Service). Organizations that lack in-house DevOps skills may consider cloud optimization platforms to obtain Kubernetes-based application management, clarity, and spending control.

 6. Promoting Serverless Architecture

DevOps teams can expect to see an increase in the adoption of serverless architecture, mainly due to the huge CapEx vs. OpEx costs of server infrastructure. Most DevOps teams tend to work on modular components that provide an overview of the pipeline. By moving these to a serverless architecture, teams can reduce pipeline-related assignments and focus on product deployment and development.

The core feature of a serverless application is that you don’t have to take care of servers and infrastructure per se and can focus totally on your product. Serverless architecture is a type of cloud computing execution model in which cloud service providers dynamically manage the provisioning of servers by themselves. As a result, serverless architecture streamlines overall DevOps operations, including the complete software lifecycle, from development through to deployment. Serverless computing also reduces the burden on the developer, such as server maintenance, cloud monitoring, and system updates. Other significant benefits include flexibility, reliability, speed, and economy.

 7. Hyper-automation – there is no such thing as too much automation

Gartner defines hyper-automation as a business-driven, disciplined approach that organizations use to rapidly identify, vet, and automate as many business and IT processes as possible.

Hyper-automation involves the organized use of multiple technologies, tools, or platforms, including (hold your breath; the list is a long one):

• artificial intelligence (AI),
• machine learning,
• robotic process automation (RPA),
• business process management (BPM),
• integration platform as a service (iPaaS),
• low-code/no-code (LCNC) solutions,
• and other decision-making, process, and task automation tools that maximize automation.

Interestingly, if you think about it carefully, the whole point of this “fancy” automation is the work of DevOps. However, it’s hard to find the right hyper-automation tools and implement them effectively. This task is challenging for small businesses and startups that often experience a lack of skilled professionals who can deal with the sheer expanse of automation mechanisms. Adopting AI-based cloud platforms developed by mature DevOps professionals to implement a well-designed strategy of cloud infrastructure management might do the trick.

Final thoughts

DevOps continues to evolve and expand, driving significant IT transformations that directly support business goals to improve a company’s ability to develop, build, run and maintain high-quality software solutions.

The trends we have outlined above will help organizations quickly move beyond automation to focus on continuous improvement. In addition, these trends are catalysts for creating a regular and reliable release pipeline and improving communication between development, IT, and business teams.

Let me highlight that this is only Part 1 of the list of DevOps trends. Part 2 will follow shortly, so make sure you are signed up for our blog updates. If you have any DevOps/FinOps-related questions, or you’re looking for a solution to reduce your cloud costs, just send us a message.