The Value of DevOps in Azure

OverviewImagine a business-critical application that requires a big change by end-of-day.

Under a traditional IT model, coordinating the necessary technologies and personnel would be near impossible. In this arrangement, development and operations teams are often siloed and unable to communicate with the speed and efficiency required.

Project delays and budget overruns are some of the predictable consequences of these silos. In response, many organizations have adopted DevOps to bring teams closer together to accelerate and improve the quality of their work. In fact, a GitLab survey found that 89% of DevOps adopters felt they had accurate insight into what others were doing, and that this visibility helped them be more innovative.1

These benefits also make DevOps essential to unlocking the value of Microsoft Azure. The skills required to thrive in a public cloud environment, competency with infrastructure, application development and security, for example, are also central technical tenets of DevOps. But DevOps is more than just a set of tools. It’s a cultural methodology that helps teams deliver higher quality software and greater value to customers.

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1 about.gitlab.com/resources/downloads/2019-global-developer-report.pdf

What is DevOps?DevOps definitions vary considerably by source. But those offered by CSPs and makers or DevOps solutions—ALL REVOLVE AROUND A FEW CENTRAL CONCEPTS:

DevOps also security and quality assurance (QA) functions to ensure application quality. And while DevOps implementations differ from one organization to the next, they share the overarching goal of producing better software on a shorter time table than is achievable with traditional IT operations.

DevOps embraces the cultural philosophy of increased collaboration between application development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) departments. Under the DevOps banner, these teams strive for the rapid delivery of high quality modern applications.

To achieve this goal, DevOps practitioners rely on distinctive tools for software development and infrastructure management. Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) platforms, integrated development environments (IDEs) and version control tools are central to DevOps workflows.

DevOps teams use these solutions to harness the power of dynamic and programmable infrastructure, namely public cloud services and the various features they provide for more streamlined provisioning, configuration and management.

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1 2 3

2 www.statista.com/statistics/673505/worldwide-software-development-survey-devops-adoption/

3 www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-04-02-gartner-forecasts-worldwide-public-cloud-revenue-to-g

As a term, DevOps originated in 2009 to denote a movement, rather than a specific standard, process or technology. Since then, it’s grown in popularity as more organizations move applications and workloads into the cloud.

In 2018, only 12% of organizations involved in web and mobile application development were not considering DevOps in some fashion.2 The share of these that had “fully embraced” DevOps also surged from 10% in 2017 to 17% a year later.

This growth has coincided with a major uptick in public cloud adoption. In fact, Gartner estimated a 17.5% year-over-year growth in public cloud revenues in 2019 along with exponential growth through 2022.3 Growing consumption of cloud services makes DevOps more appealing, as organizations of all kinds will need both a new cultural mindset and a refreshed set of tools to make applications work in environments like Azure.

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The Value of DevOpsImplemented well, DevOps can support better application quality, more sustainable IT costs and a superior customer experience. At the same time, it allows a faster time-to-market due to automated CI/CD pipelines. Below, we’ll explore each of these key benefits in more detail.

Better application quality (and velocity)Traditional software methodologies create bottlenecks throughout the application lifecycle. Silos between developers and IT operations personnel create duplicate work, miscommunication and human error, all of which pushes out release dates. Complex projects can also collapse due to excessive bugs, lengthy mean time to recovery (MTTR) or logistical challenges with provisioning and configuration.

In contrast, DevOps support better aligned communication and automation. Infrastructure-as-code (the management of infrastructure in a descriptive model using the same versioning as for project source code) enables automatic deployment and tracking of the same resources across multiple environments (such as development, QA, staging and production), removing the cost and complexity of physical provisioning

The result: DevOps organizations gain more reliable and scalable infrastructure that in turn supports higher-quality applications delivered faster. Cloud-specific solutions like Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates further simplify deployment and enhance the overall quality and velocity advantages inherent to DevOps practices.

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More sustainable IT costsThe improved communications and more efficient tools of DevOps aren’t just beneficial to software quality and velocity, though—they can also save money. In terms of potential savings, DevOps organizations are in prime position to:

Caret-right Release on time. By using CI/CD DevOps teams can run automatic builds and unit tests, be instantly notified of pass/failure, catalogue these results and run a full range of tests before deploying—all of which helps them release quickly and efficiently. One organization actually cut its release costs by 97% after adopting DevOps practices plus CI/CD.4

Caret-right Seize market opportunities. DevOps increases agility, letting organizations respond rapidly to evolving conditions. If a project needs an immediate update involving multiple cloud-native services, teams can meet those demands on schedule.

Caret-right Prevent downtime. Gartner once estimated downtime cost at $5,600 per minute.5 DevOps can curb downtime through more scalable, streamlined testing that eliminates defects before they reach production. Intuitive DRaaS solutions

like Azure Site Recovery (ASR) are also natural fits for DevOps workflows.

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4 media.webteam.puppet.com/uploads/2019/11/puppet-cs-hiscox-case-study.pdf

5 www.the20.com/blog/the-cost-of-it-downtime/

Superior customer experienceCloud services are ubiquitous and for good reason. Applications that once had long development cycles supported by on-prem IT infrastructure are now built, tested, deployed and scaled to many users in much less time and with better cost efficiency.

But the growing prevalence of the cloud comes with some risks, too. High on the list is rising user experience expectations. For instance, a suboptimal website UX can decrease purchase intent by a staggering 62%.6 DevOps teams need to remain mindful of such issues and monitor relevant KPIs like MTTRand load/dwell time, among others, on an ongoing basis. They’ll need to be ready for decisive action to remediate UX problems or risk losing people out of frustration.

On the upside, the collaborative nature of DevOps makes these tasks easier. Teams can work from shared data sources instead of siloed documents. They can use CI/CD, Azure Resource Manager templates and other tools to refine and improve customer experience throughout the application lifecycle.

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6 www.thinkwithgoogle.com/data/website-ease-of-use-statisics/

DevOps and Azure: Maximizing the Value of Cloud InvestmentDevOps and Azure have a mutually beneficial relationship. Where DevOps provides the cultural mindset and practices necessary to benefit from cloud resources, cloud service providers like Microsoft deliver the on-demand infrastructure and advanced tooling to support high velocity. Azure’s infrastructure and services are ideal for DevOps automation, enabling organizations to get the most value from their cloud investments. Some of its key DevOps-related features include:

Azure Resource Manager (ARM) TemplatesThese templates help DevOps teams implement infrastructure-as-code. Each template uses declarative syntax to simplify the deployment of Azure infrastructure, including VMs, storage and networks. Deployed resources are orchestrated by Resource Manager itself, removing the risk of incorrect orders of operations.7

Azure features and services are instantly deployable as they become available from the resource provider. ARM templates also allow integration into CI/CD pipelines, full preview of changes and extended functionality through Powershell and Bash scripts.

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7 docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/templates/overview

Azure Site Recovery (ASR) for DRaaSTransitioning to DevOps and a redundant hosted cloud service offers a central benefit in reduced downtime. Contemporary DevOps strategies often incorporate disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) to preserve business continuity.

Unlike traditional DR in which all pivotal infrastructure is located on-premises, DRaaS entails the use of on-demand resources from an external service provider.

ASR within Azure is one such DRaaS implementation and it’s one of the most straightforward options for DevOps teams. They can rely on ASR to:

Caret-right Deliver automatic, application-consistent recovery of critical apps from on-prem to the cloud, or from one Azure region to another.

Caret-right Eliminate the considerable overhead of some on-prem DR solutions requiring frequent manual patching and maintenance.

Caret-right Improve compliance with regulations such as ISO 27001 while preventing downtime and the associated impacts to revenue and brand reputation.

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Serverless computingMany modern applications use serverless computing services like those available in Azure. Under this model, the cloud service provider (CSP) takes responsibility for managing and provisioning servers on behalf of the customer, reducing the time and effort required to set up the right infrastructure for a given project.

For DevOps organizations, serverless computing translates into expanded agility and even higher developer velocity and expanded agility. Serverless resources scale automatically in response to usage and offer critical features like fault tolerance already built-in. Moreover, DevOps teams use a fully managed platform to build fast for any type of cloud deployment or service model while streamlining usage of containers by tapping into the Azure Kubernetes Service.

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Exploring Managed Services for Azure As a Microsoft-certified Azure Expert Managed Services Provider (MSP), Softchoice

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About Softchoice:Softchoice is one of the largest IT solution and managed service providers in North America. Every day, thousands of organizations rely on Softchoice to provide insight and expertise that speeds the adoption of technology, while managing cost and risk. Through our unique points of view, we challenge leaders to think differently about the impact of technology on their employees and customers.

Softchoice enables organizations to realize the full benefits of public cloud and a modern IT infrastructure through solution design, implementation, asset management, and assessment services, as well as ongoing support and mentorship through managed services.

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