Application Release Automation Trends - XebiaLabsgo.xebialabs.com/rs/xebialabs/images/Survey-Results-2013.pdf · Application Release Automation software, 16.0% • The majority of

Application Release Automation Trends

Survey Results

Table of Contents

© Copyright 2013 XebiaLabs Inc. Proprietary & Confidential.

o  Introduction o  Executive Summary o  Respondent Profile o  Survey Responses o  Conclusions o  More Information

•  XebiaLabs conducted a survey over the past few months to gain a broader view of the application release space:

Introduction


o  Current release management process o  Release process pain points o  Key initiatives and areas of focus for 2013

•  What is the state of the release process today?

o  Organizations are actively seeking to automate “the last mile” of the release process.

o  Organizations are also looking for solutions that can help unify the process to make release management a coordinated activity.

o  Organizations are researching solutions that can help them move away from expensive, error-prone “big bang” releases.

Key facts:

Executive summary


•  Almost 75% of respondents give their deployment process a failing grade.

•  Errors, deployment failures and reliance on expensive experts are the main drivers for automating application release.

•  The majority of respondents reported that deployments failed between 10 and 30% of the time.

•  Increased efficiency and release acceleration were ranked as the top benefits of deployment automation.

•  Improvement initiatives are driven by pressure to achieve a key strategic business goal: deliver more features to market faster and more reliably.

Key facts:

About the survey participants


Figure 1: Company size segmentation of respondents.

•  54% of participants work for a company with more than 1,000 employees.

•  The vast majority of respondents

are based in North America, followed by EMEA and APAC.

•  Participants job level and function

varied from individual contributor to C-level executive. Largest concentration was Dev/Ops/IT manager & director level.

46%

23%

5.6%

11.1%

3.2% 11.1% Less than 1,000

1,000-5,000

5,001-10,000

10,001-50,000

50,001-100,000

More than 100,000

About the survey participants


Financial Services/ Insurance

10%

Health care 10%

Telecommunications 9%

Transportation 2%

Travel & Leisure 2%

IT Services 34% Online/ Retail

1%

Government 9%

Retail 1%

Energy & Manufacturing

2%

Technology 7%

Other 13%

•  The majority of respondents work for financial services/insurance, health care or technology companies.

Figure 2: Industry segmentation of respondents

Key facts:

“How reliable is your deployment process?”


Not reliable, 7.5%

Needs improvement,

57.5%

Reliable, 26.4%

Very reliable, 8.5% Key findings:

•  The clear majority of respondents said the reliability of their deployment process needs improvement.

Figure 3: Reliability of the deployment process

Key findings:

“What is your biggest challenge in the deployment process?”


Too slow, 38.2%

Too many errors, 32.5%

Too much dependency

on expert resources,

39.8%

Too much inconsistency

across environments

and applications,

48.0%

Too many bottlenecks,

26.0%

Can’t scale effectively,

23.6% Other, 15.4% •  Inconsistencies across

environments and applications and dependency on experts are the leading challenges.

•  Bottlenecks, errors and slowness are also frequent complaints.

•  In the “Other” category, respondents noted lack of effective rollback capability and automation along with citing “too many manual steps” as the chief challenges. Figure 4: Biggest deployment challenges

“On average, how often do your deployments fail in Dev, Test and QA?”


<10% 10% 20% 30% 40% >50%

Figure 5: Percentage of deployments that fail

•  The majority of respondents reported that deployments failed between 10 and 30% of the time.

8.9%

35.0%

31.7%

14.6%

4.9% 4.9%

0.0%

5.0%

10.0%

15.0%

20.0%

25.0%

30.0%

35.0%

40.0%

“How many applications are you managing this year vs. last year?”


15.4%

26.0%

22.0%

15.4%

21.1%

+10% +20% +30% +50% Unchanged

Figure 6: Change in number of applications managed

Key findings:

•  Organizations are dealing with an uptick in the volume of applications they manage in 2013.

•  The majority are

experiencing an increase of 20 to 30%.

“How do you handle application deployments to middleware and cloud environments?”


Manual process,

15.1%

Custom scripting,

29.2% Partially scripted, partially manual,

35.8%

Off-the-shelf tooling, 3.8%

Application Release

Automation software,

16.0%

•  The majority of respondents take a hybrid approach to deployments: partially scripted, partially manual.

•  16% of respondents are

currently using application release automation to manage app deployments.

•  47.2% of those using custom

scripting said they are contemplating moving to an off the-shelf-solution this year.

Key findings:

Figure 7: How App Deployment is handled

“How would you rate your deployment process on the scale of 1(worst) to 10 (best)?”


•  More than 75% of respondents give their deployment process a failing grade.

Figure 8: Deployment process rating on scale of 1 to 10

Enterprise visibility, auditability and reporting


Not important,

3.8%

A nice to have, 44.3%

Critical, 51.9%

•  57.5% responded that they have visibility into the application release process along with reporting capability – 42.5% said they did not have reporting or visibility.

•  58.5% of respondents said they could pinpoint what changes were made when and by whom in the app release process – 41.5% of respondents said they could not pinpoint what changes were made when and by whom in the app release process.

•  The majority of respondents (51.9%) feel reporting, auditability and traceability are critical.

Figure 9: Importance of reporting, auditability and traceability in the application release management process.

Key findings:

“What do you perceive to be the biggest benefit of deployment automation?”


Reporting/ Visibility 4.7%

Ability to Scale, 6.6%

Cost Reduction, 5.7%

Release acceleration,

22.6%

Increased efficiency, 29.2%

Ability to support additional platforms,

2.8%

Elimination of manual

scripting, 5.7%

Bottleneck removal, 1.9%

Error elimination, 19.8%

Other, 0.9%

•  Increased efficiency and release acceleration were ranked as the top benefits of deployment automation.

Figure 10: Benefits of deployment automation


•  Automating Deployment and Continuous Delivery are the key projects for 2013.

60.6%

26%

61.5%

26.9%

19.2%

14.4%

Figure 11: 2013 project focus

Con3nuous Delivery

Automa3ng Deployment

DevOps Enablement

Private PaaS/ Private Cloud

Cloud

“What projects are you focused on in 2013?”

Other

“Is DevOps a driver to change the way you deploy applications?”


Figure 12: DevOps driver for change in application deployment?

Yes, 57.5% No, 42.5%

“When do you plan to invest in Continuous Delivery?”


Q1-Q2 2013, 38.5%

Q3-Q4 2013, 26.0%

In 2014, 16.3%

No plans at this time, 19.2%

•  The majority plan to invest in Continuous Delivery in 2013.

Figure 13: Continuous Delivery investment timing

“What cloud provider/cloud management software do you use?”


VMware vSphere, 25.0%

VMware vCloud, 6.7%

Amazon EC2, 9.6%

OpenStack, 5.8%

CloudStack, 2.9%

None and no plans, 19.2%

None but looking, 20.2%

Other, 10.6%

•  The majority have a cloud offering and 25% are looking.

Figure 14: Cloud provider/ cloud management software usage

“Do you currently use a provisioning tool?”


•  Over two-thirds already have a solution or are looking.

Figure 15: Provisioning tool usage

Yes, 41.0%

None and no plans to do so,

30.4%

None, but we are looking to do so,

28.6%

Conclusions


ü Clear market drive towards automation in the application release process.

ü  Trend for choosing “off-the-shelf” solutions vs.

developing in-house.

ü Given market trends, organizations not currently planning an initiative in 2013 need to stay informed on this issue.

Based on the findings:

Our flagship product, Deployit, is a market-leading Application Release Automation platform.

o  Headquartered in Boston, MA o  Global development and support

offices in NL, UK, France and India

About XebiaLabs

Benefits include: o  Reduce development applications costs o  Accelerate application time to market o  Bridge the gap between Development and

Operations

More information

Contact: [email protected] for a free extended trial of Deployit – the only fully

automated Application Release Automation solution.

Deployit: www.xebialabs.com/products Blog: blog.xebialabs.com Twitter: @xebialabs YouTube: youtube.com/xebialabs

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Appendix: Survey details


o  The survey was conducted by XebiaLabs, Inc.

o  More than 130 IT executives from the Fortune 500 responded to the survey.

o  The survey was conducted from October 2012 to January 2013.

o  Margin of error for the survey is plus or minus 5%.

Documents

Application Release Automation Trends - XebiaLabsgo.xebialabs.com/rs/xebialabs/images/Survey-Results-2013.pdf · Application Release Automation software, 16.0% • The majority of