DevOps Automation: What, Benefits, and Latest Trends

Automation and DevOps are the two major components that enable organizations to streamline the entire development process. It further results in two substantial changes: Automating all repetitive and manual tasks during the development procedures and enhancing cross-department or collaboration between the internal teams.

When DevOps combines with automation, it leads to a highly efficient software development lifecycle.

What is DevOps Automation?

It is the practice of automating all repetitive and manual tasks to be carried out during the web development procedure. No human interaction is required during the process. You can choose to apply automation through the entire development lifecycle, which includes:

• The design and development phase.
• The deployment and release of the software.
• Monitoring.

The major objective behind automating DevOps is to automate manual tasks and streamline the entire DevOps lifecycle to reduce the workload. Automation of the processes further results in numerous vital improvements that are outlined below:

• Human errors are drastically reduced.
• A rapidly moving DevOps lifecycle is established.
• The need for larger teams is reduced.
• Enhances team productivity.

Automation relies primarily on preset configurations and software tools to automate all essential tasks and processes. DevOps consulting will help you obtain the benefits of automation.

Benefits of Automation in DevOps

DevOps automation delivers numerous benefits, which makes it easier for developers to achieve their targets. Let us discuss a few advantages of automating DevOps.

Consistency: When the development procedures are automated to a great extent, they exist as predictable and consistent. The tool employed to automate software will operate to do the same task unless someone reconfigures it to complete any other task. The same aspect doesn't apply to human engineers.

Speed: DevOps Automation defines that specific processes like integrating code and deployment of applications happen rapidly. The fact is true for two primary reasons. The first one is that you are not required to rely on a human to start the process. If you need to deploy a new release at 2 a.m, it is impossible when done manually. On the contrary, when you employ automation tools, you will not have to wait for a human, and the process can start at any hour of the day.

Another benefit of automation is that the tasks are executed rapidly. When an engineer manually deploys a new release, they are required to assess the environment, manually verify that the new version is successfully deployed, type out configurations, etc. On the contrary, such tasks are performed instantaneously.

Scalability: Automated processes are easily scaled as compared to manual processes. The scale automation works by simply establishing additional procedures so that all increased requirements are fulfilled. However, as far as manual environments are concerned, the scaling of applications is strictly constrained by the availability of team members.

In an automated environment, scaling is not restricted and dependent on the availability of any hardware or software. In cloud-based environments, the resources are automatically scaled based on the workload.

Flexibility: Automation allows the users to be flexible regarding both the functionality and scope of the automated processes. The only restriction is the configuration of automated processes that are easily altered to satisfy the requirements. Automation is more flexible than training the developers to adapt to the recent changes that have occurred in the process.

DevOps Trends to Watch in 2021

DevSecOps Becomes Huge:

Security will still hold the top position in the priority business of all sizes; that said, DevSecOps will now become more popular than ever in 2021. When the development starts to embrace cloud-based technologies more, the entire development cycle will require a cloud-native security approach which is only possible with DevSecOps.

By adopting the methodology that is DevSecOps centric, developers will make sure that proper security level is maintained throughout the development cycle.

Developers are now decision-makers and influencers:

The impact and influence of developers will increase when it comes to the selection of development tools. The best developers always seem to pick peer-recommended tools to unravel all tech-related challenges that they face. Nowadays, developers use self-organized, large communities and pick the best tools to kick start their development projects. Even smaller projects can influence the growth and scalability of an organization.

Also read our article on best DevOps Tools for Software Development Company

Integrated Software Delivery Pipelines:

Category-leading products are generally picked for every category of the DevOps toolchain, like the CD, CI, SCA, and SAST. When such tools were required to be integrated for maintaining an efficient CI/CD pipeline, the entire process was painful and required stitching of tools together with the help of custom scripts.

This challenge can be addressed with the help of end-to-end integrated DevOps platforms.

Shifting Left with Code:

The phenomena of shifting left effortlessly to enable fixing security issues and bugs ahead in the cycle of software development. With the implementation of the shared security responsibility model and enabling the developers to take better ownership associated with the infrastructure, the security, and production problems with code, organizations are now competent in shipping codes rapidly and cheaper with no or fewer bugs.

Toolchains Grow Complex:

DevOps teams leverage several tools to support their day-to-day tasks. The major objective behind using such tools is to assist engineers in collaborate and also measure their work. Since DevOps has become so popular, the number of tools used by developers is growing each minute. However, not only the number of toolchains will increase, but the complexity will enhance as well.

As a result, instead of leveraging numerous tools to aid the DevOps services, the teams will start using more complex and broader solutions with the help of which different tasks are easily tackled across the entire development and delivery cycle.

Low-Code DevOps Automation:

Numerous workflows in the DevOps services world are pretty standard. Have a look at an alert in the production cycle, prioritize it, establish an incident, apply a fix, resolve all raised tickets, and repeat. It is just an example; however, several such use cases can be automatically managed. Developers can easily automate such workflows, and as a result, they will become more efficient.

Security at the Speed of Dev:

On average, the cycle of software development used to be at least four to six months long, but not more than that, but today, the development cycle and release of the app are accelerating. Compliance, security, vulnerability management, authorization, and authentication all should move rapidly with the help of DevOps automation services, or else the security of code is not possible. The most innovative CISOs acquire a security model of shared ownership that enables the owners of the application components to inspect and fix vulnerabilities.

Conclusion

Automation cannot replace human interactions completely. Instead, automation is a tool to facilitate more efficient workflow in the development lifecycle of DevOps. The main aim behind automating tasks should be to gain significant enhancement in performance and efficiency. Also, when automation combines with a good DevOps workflow, it will lead to high-quality software development. DevOps automation services will help you acquire such software.