As cloud adoption still faces challenges, including security, migration time and skills shortages, there has been a steady rise in DevOps as it solves many of the issues that businesses are facing.
Research from market intelligence firm IDC revealed that mature cloud organisations are more likely to practice DevOps, with 80% of optimised organisations practicing it for their cloud environments, compared with 7% for ad hoc organisations.
As organisations mature further in the cloud, containers are an increasingly important part of business strategies. The research revealed that 66% of optimised organisations said containers are important to their cloud strategy compared with 20% for ad hoc.
The flexibility that containers provide, means DevOps teams can spend less time and money testing application technologies until they find the best suited technology stacks, and instead use containers to work on loosely coupled applications to find the right stack that will meet their deployment targets.
Doug Rich, VP of EMEA at HyperGrid, said: “Cloud adoption rates have continued to grow but challenges, like skills shortages and security concerns, have meant we have seen gradual growth so far. Last year, adoption accelerated and more businesses were adopting cloud-first strategies and we saw an increase in cloud maturity in organisations. This is due to DevOps, and its ability to tackle the challenges that organisations are facing.
“Another issue that businesses have faced is the time it takes for cloud migrations to happen but the practice of DevOps has sped up this process significantly. The practice is driven by agility and has helped companies deliver functionality faster. It is no surprise to see that more mature organisations that are fully integrated into the cloud are more likely to practice DevOps. This practice ensures organisations are better prepared to evolve and adapt to constant technology changes, DevOps and cloud allows them to react quickly as the infrastructure is easily provisioned on demand.
“As cloud adoption continues to grow and business become more mature in their cloud offering, the increase in DevOps practices will grow with it. The demand from end-users for faster, more agile and proactive strategies is increasing, as digital transformation continues to evolve, and DevOps is a vital enabler of its success,” Doug concluded.