The IT landscape is changing faster than ever before. With infrastructure best practices, development tools and automation technology transforming on an almost daily basis, it’s vital your business keeps on top of everything if you’re going to be successful. One of the simplest and most effective ways to stay ahead is to expand your team with an MSP DevOps engineer.
What is DevOps?
The word “DevOps” is a combination of “development” and “operations”. It’s a strategy that helps connect the software development team with IT operations. By acting as a go-between, DevOps creates an agile relationship between both groups, allowing organizations to build and release regular updates for their products. This is much more streamlined than the traditional waterfall development method.
The relevance of CI/CD
Continuous Integration and Continuous Development (CI/CD) are what make DevOps superior to traditional development strategies. Waterfall development methods work on a linear timeline, with one stage flowing into the next. But devops helps companies manage development in a continuous feedback loop.
Working this way streamlines the software development process, allowing several daily deployments without bothering users with additional downloads or updates. In most cases, users don’t even notice anything has changed. As speed is becoming more of a necessity than a luxury, incorporating a DevOps strategy is essential to success.
Read more about DevOps as a service
What does a DevOps engineer do?
A DevOps engineer works within the DevOps team, collaborating with the IT operations staff, software developers, system operators and admins to manage code releases and deployments according to the CI/CD methodology. They also come up with solutions that streamline software development and operations.
A DevOps engineer’s day-to-day responsibilities include:
- Project management Sometimes DevOps engineers manage complete IT projects, making sure everyone communicates clearly and often.
- Creating and enhancing IT infrastructure A DevOps engineer can identify poor infrastructures and improve them, helping releases get to the market faster.
- Testing and benchmarking performance Analyzing the effectiveness and reliability of systems is a common responsibility of a DevOps engineer.
- Automation DevOps engineers streamline software development and release by identifying unnecessary time consumptions and building tools to automate them.
- Improving release cycles When release cycles are a cause of losing time, DevOps engineers remove time drains and introduce better methods to speed up the process.
- Monitoring and reporting DevOps engineers analyze processes, report on their findings and offer solutions to reduce and fix errors.
- Security Some DevOps engineers are also SecDevOps engineers, meaning they’re in charge of security for all DevOps processes.
How integrating DevOps and an MSP will improve your business
Traditionally, DevOps and MSPs were seen as two mutually exclusive entities. But as demand for each solution continues to grow, more enterprises are discovering the incredible power they yield when combined.
Increased agility
For DevOps to be a success, there already needs to be at least a basic collaboration between software development and IT operations. If you already use an MSP for your IT department, having an in-house DevOps engineer just won’t work, as there are too many hurdles in the way to slow down the process.
To ensure smooth movement and optimized growth, it’s much better to use a single MSP for your IT and DevOps requirements. This way big changes can take place fast enough to keep up with the competition and flexibility is ensured for ongoing innovation, following whichever direction a business may take.
Gain access to masterminds and the latest tech
MSPs have the latest development tools and DevOps experts with the ideal skill sets to do the best job possible. You don’t need to waste countless hours and resources scoping out the best talent. MSPs are already in touch with them. For example, the majority of Redtech developers are former Microsoft devs, so you know they’re used to setting the bar high.
Finding an exceptional DevOps engineer is only half the job. They can only truly thrive when they have access to top tools. By providing them with the most up-to-date, industry-leading technology, MPS DevOps engineers can do amazing things that are beyond the budget of most firms that keep the department in-house.
In the hands of experts
A Ponemon Institute survey conducted on behalf of Embotics® revealed that 74% of respondents understood the importance of DevOps, but only 33% believed they could quickly incorporate DevOps into their business. When asked the reason why implementation would take so long, 53% said they lacked the resources and/or skills.
These figures indicate that firms have major problems when trying to introduce DevOps into their company in-house. Despite the troubling numbers, 40% of those surveyed said DevOps would be beneficial for their company. The solution? Hand over your DevOps engineering needs to MSPs.
MSPs are experts in initiating major cultural transformations. They provide ongoing support to companies while helping them set up automation tools, create new infrastructures, manage containers and train employees. They can improve workload balance, increase security and provide continuous support.
When you delegate an important role such as DevOps engineer to a service provider that specializes in the task, you get the benefit of mastermind knowledge without any of the implementation or maintenance hassle.
Stay ahead of the competition
As new technology and solutions become available, DevOps is continuously changing. This means that nobody ever finishes incorporating DevOps, but that’s the nature of the strategy.
Although there’s no definitive payoff, DevOps is undoubtedly beneficial for IT professionals. By implementing DevOps, a healthier IT culture is created through increased communication transparency, faster development and more frequent releases. However, to enjoy all these benefits, DevOps demands ongoing maintenance.
Once avante-garde solutions become obsolete faster than ever before. And if you fall behind in this department, you run the risk of being overtaken by competitors and forgotten by your customers.
MSPs help you stay ahead of the competition by providing you with resources standard organizations rarely have access to. Enterprise technology companies craft unique solutions specifically for MSPs. These unique partnerships guarantee MSPs have the very latest technology to use on behalf of their clients.
Combine a DevOps engineer and an MSP for best results
Not long ago, DevOps engineer was mostly an in-house role. But thanks to agile MSPs, today you don’t have to dedicate sizable chunks of budget and resources to an in-house department. By using an MSP for your DevOps team, you can continuously improve your products and services to keep your customers happy, improve communication between departments to please your staff and remain competitive in an ever-changing market to grow your business.