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What Kind of DevOps to Look for in 2023

DevOps
benefits & use cases DataOps, FinOps & DevSecOps

When asked about the implementation of DevOps practices, 99% of Atlassian DevOps Trends Survey 2020 respondents said that it positively impacted their organization. No wonder that adopting DevOps is one of the hottest trends in the IT industry. However, if you start reading more about the topic, you will soon find out that in 2023 it’s not only DevOps. There are at least DataOps, DevSecOps, and FinOps, to name just the most popular and widespread “Ops.” So which one should you choose to embrace the benefits of having an Ops and avoid a business oops? 

From this text, you will learn about DataOps, DevSecOps, and FinOps. We will discuss what they do, along with benefits and use cases.

What is DevSecOps?

Just as we did for the previous two, we will start the DevSecOps section with the definition. This one is provided by IBM:

DevSecOps—short for development, security, and operations—automates the integration of security at every phase of the software development lifecycle, from initial design through integration, testing, deployment, and software delivery.

DevSecOps is a shift in the approach to security. With the dedication of managers and the team’s understanding, DevSecOps can be introduced without hiring a dedicated professional. However, having someone plan, oversee, and navigate the DevSecOps transformation is beneficial to the smoothness and perception of the entire process. So, just like the other “Opses,” DevSecOps does not directly refer to the role within an organization, but it can be used to describe one. 

Who Needs DevSecOps?

In 2023 software is integrated into people’s daily lives. It is no longer an addition or distraction. IT solutions are widely used in critical industries like healthcare, transportation, engineering, and finance, where security is a matter of life and death. But software security concerns every company, not only those in the industries mentioned above.

Hence DevSecOps practices that integrate security directly into the process of software creation and even planning is something every company creating any code should be interested in pursuing.

DevSecOps Benefits

Speed

Integrating security practices into the software creation process instead of keeping them a separate final step significantly speeds up the development. All the time that would typically be spent on auditing, implementing security measures, and then security testing is saved.

Cost

Reducing the time needed for development directly translates into the budget required to complete the project. Not to mention the money that could be potentially lost because of security breaches. When code is created with security in mind from day 1, the likelihood of them occurring is greatly reduced.

Security

Security breaches are a huge problem on many different levels. They destroy the company’s reputation, cause clients to leave, and may even entail financial responsibility. That’s why increasing code security should be a priority in every company dealing with software.

DevSecOps Use Cases

Accenture – Consulting

One of the most widely discussed DevSecOps transformations is the one taking place in Accenture. This global consulting company decided to change its approach to software creation and introduce DevSecOps practices. While the transformation is still in progress, the anticipated results include an increase in the number of deployments, a decrease in time from idea to implementation, and, obviously, an increase in code security.

HSBC – Banking

HSBC is one of the most prominent financial institutions in the world. They illustrated their approach to DevSecOps practices by sharing the way they work on a small project – a mobile banking application. The example clearly illustrates how including security engineers as early as the planning stage helped plan the work better and decreased the overall time to market for a product. 

Allianz – Insurance

Allianz is one of the biggest brands in the insurance industry. Their culture is strictly corporate. They face challenges and problems smaller companies usually don’t, and they have to maintain the highest security standards. Their security team decided to test the DevSecOps methodology on the isolated project to see if it would fit into the Allianz business model. The result was a 20% increase in sales, but also a deeper understanding between security and development teams translating directly to their future cooperation.

DataOps

What is DataOps?

The definition by Gartner reads as follows:

DataOps is a collaborative data management practice focused on improving the communication, integration, and automation of data flows between data managers and data consumers across an organization.

Does it mean that DataOps is not a person or a role?! Yes. And no. The definition above clearly states that DataOps is a set of processes. Yet, it doesn’t mean there can’t be a person or even the entire department, depending on the organization’s size, responsible for ensuring those processes are in place so that data are accessible to appropriate stakeholders whenever needed.

Moreover, there has to be someone to plan, create, execute, and oversee the transformation. Naturally, such a person would be called a DataOps.

Who Needs DataOps?

DataOps is key in organizations working with data, like those in healthcare, retail and wholesale, manufacturing, and finance. In those industries having real-life data insights provides a significant competitive advantage. On the other hand, are there any industries in 2023 that don’t need data? Customer retention, marketing insights, and trend prediction are invaluable in business.

Data could be an asset in every organization. The thing that’s usually missing is the proper analytics and distribution. And this is precisely where DataOps enters the stage.

DataOps Benefits

Data Quality

Adopting DataOps dramatically improves data quality. Introducing processes, the single source of truth, and validation reduces the risk of manual copy-pasting and combing through different spreadsheets in search of metrics.

Productivity

DataOps practices allow serving the right data to the right people at the right time. There is no way such a situation wouldn’t improve the team’s productivity. Whatever data-driven information is needed, it can be found in an eye-blink.

Big Picture

By structuring data and automating data processing, DataOps allows executives to see the bigger picture. Data give invaluable insights into the company, its strengths, and its weaknesses. When data is scattered across different documents in different departments, it’s impossible to get a complete understanding of the processes.

DataOps Use Cases

AdAstra – Education

AdAstra is a company working with students and universities to help students graduate faster. The adoption of DataOps reduced the time of onboarding new clients from months to days, and the time needed for gathering data dropped from almost a year to weeks.

Boc – Healthcare/Transportation

BOC is a UK gas-supply company delivering oxygen to patients and hospitals. They faced a skyrocketing demand for their services due to Covid 19 pandemic. Implementing DataOps processes allowed them to cut the response time for new queries from weeks to days by giving them a clear view of available assets.

Emaar Properties – Real Estate

Emaar Properties is the owner of Burj Khalifa and the largest property developer in Dubai. It uses the DataOps approach to process over 300GB of data weekly. As a result, reports that took two weeks to prepare are now ready within three days.

FinOps

What is FinOps?

Let’s have a quick look at the definition of FinOps by the FinOps Foundation:

FinOps is an evolving cloud financial management discipline and cultural practice that enables organizations to get maximum business value by helping engineering, finance, technology, and business teams to collaborate on data-driven spending decisions.

It can be easily spotted that, just as was the case with DataOps, FinOps is not a person or a role. Instead, it is a set of practices helping organizations optimize cloud usage.

Let’s face it, cloud has many advantages: it is scalable, flexible, and usually cost-effective. But it all comes with a price. And when talking about cloud services, the price means literal money the organization has to spend every billing period.

Adopting FinOps practices is a way to make sure money is spent well. It doesn’t have to entail cost-cutting, but rather cost-optimization understood as ensuring that infrastructure and tools are best suited for current needs and future plans.

Who Needs FinOps?

FinOps is designed to keep track of cloud expenses with a bigger picture in mind. Hence adopting FinOps is a natural follow-up of the DevOps and cloud transformation. There are no industries where FinOps is especially beneficial. It is just the way to fully embrace the benefits of the cloud while avoiding its pitfalls.

FinOps Benefits

Transparency

Adopting FinOps practices brings transparency to the entire cloud transformation. With FinOps reports, everyone can see how resources are allocated, what is used, by whom, and for what reason. Cloud is no longer just a cost. It is a justified expense that serves a specific purpose.

Cost Optimization

Transparency brought by FinOps results not only in bigger trust among different departments but also allows for spotting unused or underused resources. Matching expenses with business needs is a key benefit of implementing FinOps practices.

Strategic Planning

Finally, cost transparency and clear allocation of resources give room for strategic planning. With a clear view of the currently used infrastructure and tools, it’s easy to plan. With FinOps in place, there is no room for unanticipated expenses.

FinOps Use Cases

Visionet – Digital Technology Solutions

Visionet is a company providing digital solutions for many clients across different industries. While one of the services they offer is cloud transformation, keeping track of the cloud expenses for various clients and their own infrastructure was difficult for them. Adopting FinOps practices allowed them to consolidate data from multiple sources into just one dashboard, significantly reducing the workload connected with cloud expense management.

NoName – IT

NoName Security specializes in APIs management for big enterprises. While they help their clients manage and secure resources, they had a problem handling their own cloud expenses. When they adopted FinOps practices, they were able to cut their cloud spending by 50%. One of the problems that surfaced during FinOps implementation was that on-demand instances were running 24/7. Something that could be more challenging to spot during routine accounting work.

E-commerce Group

The bigger the organization, the harder it is to attribute cloud spending to a particular role or department. Bills tend to rise out of control, and no one seems to know why. This is what happened after the anonymous e-commerce organization decided to migrate to the cloud. The solution was FinOps implementation. The initial audit revealed that engineers tended to fix the performance issue by increasing the machine size, which resulted in 5% usage. After FinOps adoption, the company was able to save $250k during the first four months. Overall, cloud spending was reduced by 16%.

Summary

Adopting DevOps practices is a transformational experience for the entire organization. However, DevOps is a broad category. That’s why identifying key pain points and adopting one of the more focused DevOps practices dealing with organization-specific issues may be even more beneficial. 



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