Does DevOps Have a Future?

A resilient methodology that has taken the modern software development process is a combination of tools, practices, and procedures that blend into software development and deliver it to users with IT operation. Named “DevOps” by Patrick Debois in 2009, the methodology strikes a balance between the software development teams in an organization and the IT operations team, introducing multiple tools, procedures, best practices to foster collaboration between the two independent units and increase the efficiency of their collaborative efforts.

Testimony of teams adopting this practice has led to its continuous adoption among various organizations with no sign of slowing down anytime soon.

DevOps prides itself in collaboration, agility, and automation of the many proceedings involved in software development, delivery, and IT operations. To achieve this, it promotes autonomous end-to-end responsibility, focuses on customer needs, infrastructure as code, process automation, gradual, small scale and continuous changes, development, testing, integration, and delivery.

With the upsurge of tools, SaaS platforms like Azure DevOps and low-code/now-code platforms that offer an end-to-end DevOps toolchain with a lower operational burden, professionals, especially newbies looking to pursue a career in the field, are uncertain of whether or not the DevOps career is worth chasing.

Firstly, DevOps is not a dead-end. It is a dynamic and ever-evolving field.

However, understanding the impact of the DevOps practice, its demand in the tech job market, and rising developments in the field will help you decide whether or not this is true.

The impacts of DevOps

Improved automation and efficiency

Work mode is changing. Companies across all industries are leveraging software to deliver their solutions. As a lingering effect of the Covid 19 pandemic, remote working is increasingly dominant in many organizations.

All IT professionals (developers and operations) depend on the internet to keep their work to life with remote working. However, without an already built automation system, this will not be possible. DevOps encourages the automation of software testing, integration, and deployment. It also promotes infrastructure provisioning and management. All these automation plays a crucial role in improving all stakeholders' efficiency, making the process less error-prone, and enhancing the quality of software.

As the world faces further uncertainties in the future, the automation provided by DevOps will ensure IT companies stay in the loop.

Stable and predictable software delivery process

The traditional process of developing and delivering software is volatile and unpredictable because there is such a thing as agility and collaboration between the development and operations teams. This leads to an unpredictable timeline because of the many backs and forth before the software passes to production.

DevOps processes including automation, collaboration, continuous testing, integration, deployment, and delivery result in more stable, predictable, and reliable software delivery.

Faster release cycles

One of the many future-proof impacts of DevOps is the faster delivery of software. As stated above, in the traditional software delivery process, the uncertainty and continuous back and forth caused by a lack of collaboration between the development and operations teams lead to a longer software delivery process.

With practices like agile software development, automation, continuous integration and deployment, and collaboration promoted by DevOps, software is delivered faster.

Aside from these positive impacts DevOps have on the development and delivery of software, below are some of the reasons DevOps will continue to be a force to reckon with in delivering quality software in the future.

Security enhancement

Security can be costly when done wrongly. With the rise of automation and remote working, teams need to secure their system against cyber attacks. The DevOps methodology helps build an inclusive security practice by implementing standard security protocols from development to testing, deployment, and production stages. With the increasing adoption of other security methodologies like DevSecOps that take their roots from DevOps, DevOps ensures the security and integrity of software and the underlying infrastructure.

Integration with cloud, containers, and microservices

Cloud computing, containerization, and microservices are common software development trends these days. DevOps is readily designed for these types of software development architecture. DevOps helps organizations maximize the benefits of containers and microservice architecture by enabling teams to work collaboratively on the same project in small units and push it to continuous testing, deployment, and production through the standard automated pipeline already established by DevOps. The microservice architecture with DevOps results in quick testing, faster deployment, more effortless scalability, and maintenance of the system.

Integration of AI and ML

Another reason why the DevOps career is not showing any sign of trough is artificial intelligence and machine learning. With the continuous growth in artificial intelligence and machine learning in software development, practices like MLOps and AIOps integrate DevOps into AI.

Boosting professional credibility

With the amount of knowledge DevOps professionals possess, they have the edge over other professionals in the tech field. Having knowledge of DevOps increases your credibility when chasing a career in other areas of IT.

Wide learning opportunity

In addition to the benefits of DevOps in software development, a DevOps professional also stands to gain a lot from the field. If you are one who enjoys learning about new things, then you'll never get tired of the dynamicity of DevOps. Because DevOps is an intersection between two fields, dev and operations, you will have to learn about many things in both fields and learn how to use the various tools that make the process seamless.

Competitive salary

Reports from multiple surveys, including the 2021 StackOverflow developer survey and CodinGame developer survey, confirm that DevOps is one of the top three highest-paying tech roles globally, up to $120,000 in annual salary for an average DevOps engineer. Other DevOps-related roles such as DevOps evangelist, platform engineer also command a respectable amount of pay among other tech roles.

DevOps and no-code platforms

Even in the wake of various new tools and platforms that requires low/no code to perform DevOps tasks like creating and managing CI/CD pipelines, create and manage infrastructures without writing code, and using technologies like Kubernetes via graphical user interfaces, the DevOps role appears to be waxing stronger. Various surveys and reports confirm the uptrend in DevOps hiring while the average salary for the role also keeps increasing. All of these signifies that the role and impact of DevOps is one that cannot be easily displaced which will result in further demand for them as the technology matures and infrastructure continuously becomes more complex.