DevOps Blog
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Lessons from the DevOps Front Lines
While it may be difficult to imagine yourself as working on the DevOps front lines when you work from home, I’ve learned as a DevOps engineer at Flux7 that indeed that is the case. Here, I have had the opportunity to work on incredibly rewarding projects, the most recent of which is no exception. Recently I have been fortunate enough to be a part of the team that developed and deployed a proxy cluster setup for one of our customers. I learned several things over the course of the project that in the spirit of continuous learning (and improvement in the greater DevOps community) I share with you today. I’ll start with my takeaways about the project and working as part of an Agile team and conclude with my thoughts on specific technologies.
IT Modernization and DevOps News Week in Review 7.27.2020
In this week’s DevOps news, CloudBees and Accelerated Strategies Group share the results of their State of Software Delivery Management 2020 report. In it they unveil that 65% of surveyed organizations are unable to accurately quantify the cost of feature delivery delays and 84% responded that the inaccessibility of information impedes their ability to do their work or make data-driven decisions. Despite being years into the DevOps movement, the report finds that silos remain a challenge for frontline workers’ ability to progress their work. To address a lack of SDM maturity in organizations, the report writers name three areas organizations can look to where SDM can have the most positive effect on their work.
Take a Customer Queue: Navigate the New Normal with IT Agility
Reacting to market change is like playing baseball. Vigilant batters who watch as the ball leaves the pitcher’s grip pick up on the nuances of the ball’s velocity and spin, using these clues to determine and calibrate how they’ll hit. Similarly, as experienced industry watchers, executives have learned to identify market patterns and given their ‘velocity and spin’, calibrate the business’s reaction. Yet, every so often, the pitcher will throw a perfect curveball, creating the illusion that the ball is dropping quicker than it is, hampering the batter’s reaction. This year has been full of curveballs for IT leaders. Yet, with an adaptive strategy and IT agility that will flex to hit any curveball, IT leaders can react intelligently to a ‘new normal,’ building a strategy for what’s to come, despite market ambiguities.
IT Modernization and DevOps News Week in Review 7.20.2020
In DevOps news this week, Dell confirms rumors that it may spin-off VMware. In a press release statement, Dell said it is exploring a potential spin-off of its 81% equity ownership interest in the company. It was careful to note that any potential spin-off would not happen before September 2021. Further, Dell expects any agreement would include a continuation of the existing mutually beneficial commercial arrangements like go-to-market, services, research and development, and intellectual property agreements.
Don’t Fear Cloud Lock-In: The Benefits of Standardization
Lock-in has been a perennial IT concern, so it only makes sense that IT would voice this same worry when it comes to cloud computing. As a result, enterprises are naturally very aware that being dependent on a single cloud vendor could present significant cost, legal, and/or technical issues if they choose to change platforms down the road. However, the benefits of cloud standardization can significantly outweigh the potential downsides of cloud lock-in, especially when an organization has done its homework, selecting the best-fit cloud provider for its needs.
IT Modernization and DevOps News Week in Review 7.13.2020
In this week’s DevOps news, Oracle announces its Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer. The new cloud region brings together Oracle’s second-generation cloud services in an on-premises cloud solution. Touted as ideal for highly regulated or security-focused businesses, the new offering was quickly flagged as taking on AWS Outposts. AWS, for its part, announced Amazon RDS support for MySQL and PostgreSQL databases on AWS Outposts. It complemented this news with the introduction of its Migration Acceleration Program for Storage which provides services, best practices, and tools to help accelerate storage migrations on AWS.
Four Recommendations to Boost Test Automation
According to DZone news, “Forrester recommends test automation rates of over 80% to meet the demands of two-week Agile sprints. However, only 12% of surveyed reference clients achieved that level of test automation.” While this gap may seem insurmountable, in today’s article we’ll share several approaches to boost the amount of automated testing you’re doing, and how to focus where it counts most.
IT Modernization and DevOps News Week in Review 7.6.2020
In this week’s DevOps news, new research by VMware shows how enterprises benefit from modern applications during COVID-19. The study, conducted in March and April 2020, reveals that modern applications have multiple benefits including enabling remote workforces (54%); pushing quick updates in response to changing landscape (42%); and, maintaining reliable uptime (41%). Importantly, only 2% reported unsuccessful digital transformation efforts.
Cloud Maturity Assessment: An Empirical Approach
Assessing an organization’s preparedness and cloud maturity provides an important foundation to build a roadmap. An assessment gives IT leaders much-needed insight into both gaps and what their team does well, so they can capitalize on team strengths, plan for training, and proactively approach speed bumps. Yet, it is difficult to measure where your organization is compared to other organizations. How do you measure where you are, where you could improve and how you benchmark against others? A cloud maturity assessment helps answer these questions and more. In today’s article, I will share through the case study of a Fortune real estate firm how you, too, can build a roadmap for greater maturity with a Cloud Maturity Assessment.
IT Modernization and DevOps News Week in Review 6.29.2020
In this week’s DevOps news, JFrog makes two announcements at its JFrog swampUP Conference. First, it introduces CDN-based and Peer-to-Peer software package distribution mechanisms. Designed to help users tackle the challenge associated with frequently delivering large volumes of artifacts internally and externally, the two new mechanisms accelerate download speeds and grow resilience by expanding beyond a single point of failure. The company also launched at the conference ChartCenter. The free, central repository of Helm charts contains immutable versions making it a single source of truth.
A Case Study On How Investing In Agility Can Lead To Shareholder Value
According to an old saying, “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” And while no one likes to think of a pandemic as an opportunity, one company, Zoom, appears to have prepared for a moment like this where it has the opportunity to scale to meet the demand of a user base that grew 67% in Q1 2020, according to the New Statesman. In fact, Zoom’s preparation has positioned it to become the second-most downloaded app in the world, with more than 50 million downloads from the Google Store alone.
Grow Flexibility, Agility with Amazon Connect
Many businesses are discovering the benefits of employees who are able to work from home. Yet, not all employees are able to work from a home office as easily as others. Traditionally, organizations find it more difficult to facilitate work-at-home environments for call center employees as they have been tied to legacy on-premises telecommunications infrastructure and applications. Amazon Connect seeks to upend this paradigm, giving businesses the flexibility to operate virtual call centers, with agents and managers who are able to work anywhere at any time.