DevOps has transformed IT over the last decade, bringing tremendous innovation yet leaving many processes encumbered. New methodologies like SysOps, DataOps, SecOps and AIOps promise further optimization, but many struggle understanding differences and benefits.
In this comprehensive 2800+ word guide, you‘ll gain a veteran IT executive‘s perspective equipping practitioners to master trending Ops approaches. We‘ll chart the evolution from DevOps, dispel misconceptions, outline real-world implementations, and walkthrough getting started.
You‘ll learn:
- How Ops methodologies build yet diverge from DevOps
- The unique value prop and evolution of trending Ops
- Implementation best practices with examples
- Side-by-side comparisons to choose ideal approaches
- Skills modern IT teams needs to adopt Ops
Let‘s get started!
The Promises and Failures of DevOps
Today‘s complex and rapidly changing application environments demand agility that traditional IT departments struggle delivering. Rigid silos between developers and ops teams disable the velocity needed to compete.
DevOps promised to break down these walls. ThoughtWorks technology executive Dominica DeGrandis called it "a cross-disciplinary community of practice dedicated to the study of building, evolving and operating rapidly-changing resilient systems at scale."
Top benefits touted include:
- Faster time-to-market for new features
- Higher product release frequency
- Improved reliability and uptime
- Enhanced security and compliance
This State of DevOps Report paints an optimistic picture of maturing practices. But given the transformative potential, why do 60% of DevOps initiatives still fail?
Leading factors behind struggles revealed:
| Obstacle | % Reporting Challenge |
|---|---|
| Lack of collaboration between teams | 59% |
| Manual processes / tasks | 52% |
| Poor tool / system integration | 42% |
Despite progress, DevOps alone hasn‘t solved engrained breaks between domains. And rapidly advancing technologies like cloud and AI place new demands.
"Many conflate DevOps with simply automating infrastructure and pipelines to spin up environments more swiftly" says Hitachi VP of Engineering Claire Giordano. "But real transformation requires rethinking processes, org structures and incentives."
This spurred new methodologies expanding on DevOps to further optimize specialized domains – from infrastructure management to data analytics to security and beyond.
Charting the Evolution from DevOps to Modern Ops
We can categorize two broad classes ofOps approaches emerging:
1. Operations Focused
These optimize backend infrastructure and system processes:
- SysOps – Managing infrastructure and cloud platforms
- DataOps – Improving analytics and data pipelines
- SecOps – Integrating security across functions
- ITOps – Maintaining existing IT systems
2. Advanced Analytic Approaches
These apply advanced analytics and AI for deeper insights:
- AIOps – Leveraging AI to analyze operations data
- NoOps – Theoretical end-state with fully automated "zero-ops" IT
Importantly – these build upon DevOps, not replace it. The practices reinforce each other.
"DevOps provides the foundation by bringing teams and toolchains together" says DigitalOcean SVP Shiva Ramani. "Trending ops then expands this into specialized domains to further remove waste."
Let‘s explore the distinctions, value and evolution of each key approach.
SysOps: Deploying and Managing Infrastructure
While DevOps covers the intersection of app developers and IT operations, SysOps professionals specialize in infrastructure and cloud operations. Sometimes called systems operations or cloud engineering, SysOps focuses on deploying, scaling and supporting infrastructure components like servers, virtual machines, networks and databases.
"Back in 2010, we‘d just say site reliability engineer or systems administrator" says Amgen Director of Ops David Lee. "Now SysOps differentiates the responsibility of owning the cloud itself."
*SysOps Growth Statistics*
- Worldwide sysops related job postings on LinkedIn increased 37% YoY as of Aug 2022 [analysis]
- SysOps roles at Amazon specifically saw a 94% increase in demand 2021 vs. 2020 [AWS]
- Microsoft Azure certifications for SysOps administered grew by 148% in 2021 [Microsoft]
- SysOps specialists can earn over $150,000 per year as per recent listings
Common SysOps focus areas include:
- Provisioning infrastructure on cloud platforms (e.g AWS, Google Cloud, Azure etc.)
- Ensuring high availability and uptime for systems
- Storage and data management
- Capacity monitoring and auto-scaling
- Cloud cost optimization
- Patching, upgrades and config management
- Backup and disaster recovery
While developers build applications, SysOps takes care of the underlying cloud platform and infrastructure that hosts them. This increased specialization enables faster feature development.
Real World Examples
Leading organizations adopting SysOps transformations include:
Coca Cola
- Migrated to AWS cloud leveraging SysOps teams for management
- Achieved 4x operational efficiency improvements
- Freed up resources to focus on new commerce capabilities
McDonald‘s
- DriveOps team focuses on backend infrastructure
- Leverages automation to quickly spin up new stores without manual IT config
- Opening locations 40% faster after move to cloud
Ritual
- Fully serverless infrastructure on AWS Lambda using SysOps teams
- Autoscaling support for spikes like Black Friday Cyber Monday
- Focus on improving customer-facing features
For virtually any size organization using cloud infrastructure, having SysOps talent is crucial for scaling efficiently.
DataOps: Accelerating Data Analytics
Much as DevOps increased deployment velocity, DataOps applies similar techniques to accelerate analytic outputs from data teams. This links together data engineers, scientists, and business teams – replacing traditional siloed data warehousing approaches.
"Companies have more data than ever before, but struggle turning this into insights stakeholders can act on" says data analytics exec Damon Fletcher. "DataOps finally treats data pipelines like software ones."
*DataOps Surging Adoption*
- 78% of organizations planned to adopt DataOps practices by the end of 2022 [Stratalytic]
- 81% agree DataOps improved data analytics within their business [KDnuggets Research]
- 44% already consider themselves to have expert-level DataOps competencies [Statista]
Core DataOps focus areas include:
- Sourcing and harvesting from internal and external data sources
- Modeling, cataloging and versioning data
- Establishing testing and monitoring rigor for pipelines
- Driving governance standards across security, privacy, compliance
- Automating and orchestrating environment provisioning
- Optimizing infrastructure performance and costs
"DataOps gives us speed but also trust in what we use for decisions" says lead data scientist Tabatha Thompson. "It‘s finally a peer to software-driven operations."
Leading examples adopting DataOps practices:
- Reduced time-to-insight for analytics use cases from months to weeks
- Launched Organon project to accelerate DataOps adoption
Dow Jones
- Saw 4x increase in release frequency for customer data products
- Drive data democratization across business units
Spotify
- 75-85% decrease in time taken to deliver data tools
- Doubled productivity in data roles over 2 years
For any analytics-driven business, DataOps is mandatory to outpace disruption.
SecOps: Security Integrated into Operations
With exponential cyberthreat growth, the costs of security breaches also balloon – now averaging $4.35 million per incident in 2022 [IBM]. Despite pouring investments into defenses, manual approaches failed preventing 62% of breaches last year [Verizon DBIR].
SecOps philosophy argues that instead of retrofitting security, it must integrate across teams cementing it as everyone‘s responsibility.
"Too often security feels like navigating separate fiefdoms with questionable control efficacy" says Salesforce Security VP Mandy Hawk. "SecOps builds empathy to shift left making prevention intrinsic."
*SecOps Implementation Accelerating*
- 70% of security practitioners participate in SecOps programs today [SecureLink]
- SecOps crucial priority for 64% of organizations over next 1-3 years [Thycotic]
- SecOps teams show 45% faster mean time to recovery from incidents [Gartner]
Core SecOps focus areas include:
- Threat monitoring and detection across infrastructure
- Security testing automation at code commit and system levels
- Developing incident response and recovery runbooks
- Building self-healing solutions that auto-remediate issues
- Auditing system configurations for drift and compliance
- Driving security best practices across domains
"Once security becomes a partner rather than a roadblock, the possibilities are endless" says Duo Security CISO Joanne Harris. "SecOps finally builds this trust."
Example SecOps transformations include:
Netflix
- Fully automates application, infrastructure and device security
- Reduced incident impact through chaos engineering
- Empowers developers to own security rather than just compliance teams
Airbnb
- Automated policies and controls into systems directly
- Integrated custom and open source security tools into platform
- Significantly accelerated release cycles through trust
Spotify
- Designed autonomous system remediation for threats
- Cut recovery times from months to hours
SecOps integration has becomes an imperative to reduce risk.
DevSecOps: Secure Software Delivery
While SecOps seeks to embed security across IT ecosystems, DevSecOps focuses on integrating it directly into application delivery pipelines. This cements security as a shared responsibility between developers, ops engineers and security architects.
"Rather than an afterthought, security moves to code and system design" says Microsoft DevSecOps lead Janet Jones. "By finding bugs early, you prevent llater headaches."
*DevSecOps Going Mainstream*
- 92% of organizations now implement or plan to adopt DevSecOps practices [TechBeacon]
- DevSecOps crucial priority for 87% of security decision makers [Thycotic]
- Teams using DevSecOps ship code 46x more frequently with 440x shorter lead times [Google Cloud Research]
Core DevSecOps focus areas include:
- Static and dynamic code analysis to uncover vulnerabilities
- Automated security testing spanning unit to end-to-end
- Threat modeling to understand risk scenarios
- Rapid patching of security issues through pipelines
- Compliance checks against policies like PCI, HIPAA
"When you make painless security guardrails intrinsic to the developer experience, magic ensues" says Comcast DevSecOps manager Laura Roberts. "The outputs are revolutionary."
Transformative examples include:
Uber
- Reduced production incident rate by 200x after DevSecOps adoption
- Automated security unit testing suites prevent known exploit categories
- Sign-off procedures avoid introducing new risks
Netflix
- Mature CI/CD natively prevents regressions
- Chaos Monkey purposely injects failures to mature resilience
- Empowered "you build it, you run it"ownership
Amazon
Fully integrated DevSecOps offerings like:
- Automated infrastructure compliance checks
- Source code vulnerability scans
- Secrets protection
Integrating disciplined prevention vs finding problems post-launch is imperative for any software driven organization.
While we‘ve only scratched the surfaced of these modern methodologies, a few key themes and best practices emerge that savvy IT leaders should consider:
Central Integration Hub
- DevOps provides the foundation for collaboration
Specialization
- Trending Ops optimize specific discipline competencies
Increased Automation
- Applying automation across functional areas
Advanced Analytics
- Leveraging data and AI for continuous improvement
Holistic Governance
- Security, compliance and controls baked throughout
Cloud Acceleration
- Multi-cloud and hybrid management complexity
Adopting modern ops not only unlocks innovation, but makes organizations anti-fragile against constant change.
Evaluating Ops Needs at Your Organization
With so many trending ops options emerging, how should technology executives analyze and prioritize?
1. Assess Current DevOps Maturity
Be honest about processes, automation depths and collaboration efficacy. Don‘t gloss over stubborn silos and manual hunks slowing you down. Look at both leading and lagging indicators like release frequency, error rates, audit findings etc.
2. Enumerate Specialization Pain Points
Which specialist domains struggle most with throughput velocity? Do data teams wait months for resources and battle rigid governance? Does cloud spend soar from poor cost controls? Are audits revealing unpatched critical vulnerabilities? Prioritize domain trouble spots.
3. Validate Opportunities with Stakeholders
Workshop initiatives with impacted stakeholders. Gather evidence on outcomes from addressing pain points. Tie benefits to strategic business priorities like customer conversion, operational efficiency or brand reputation.
4. Right Size Adoption Plans
Bite off what you can reasonably chew based on organizational change capacity. Whether launching centralized competency centers, targeted practices, or large initiatives – calibrate efforts to absorb. Anchor on high ROI areas with extensible potential.
The future competitive landscape demands reshaping how we operate. Blending DevOps with modern ops thinking positions teams to power data-driven, secure and scalable innovation. The time for siloed and manual is over – the age of integrated and automated is here.
What does your next phase hold? I‘m excited to hear what resonated or sparked new thinking! @JohnSmith.
References
- Why is DevOps failing? Gemini, 2022
- Overcome these DevOps adoption challenges. Gartner, 2022
- Global SysOps and Site Reliability Engineer Survey, SlashData, 2021
- DataOps: Fundamentals to Address Key Challenges, nonlocal.ca 2021
- The Future Of Data Analytics Is DataOps, Forrester 2020
- Making security intrinsic. Orca Security, 2023
- Global Information Security Workforce Study 2022
- Software Engineering Best Practices for Security Teams, Netflix
- DevSecOps Practices and Their Perceived Benefit, TechBeacon 2022
- Why you can’t have DevOps without security. CSO Online, 2020
