DevOps engineers and consultants are in high demand. DevOps engineering services combine development and operations to provide a unified approach to application development and IT operations. By bringing together these cross-functional disciplines, DevOps can help your company get more things done, faster and more creatively.
What is DevOps?
You’ve probably heard the term DevOps, but what exactly does it mean – and what are DevOps engineers and consultants?
Definition of DevOps
According to TechTarget, DevOps is the blend of development (“Dev”) and operations (“Ops”). DevOps presents a shared approach to those tasks performed by typically separate application development and operations teams.
What is a DevOps Engineer?
A DevOps engineer is an in-house tech person charged with implementing DevOps practices. The DevOps engineer helps to automate and unify processes, methodologies, and tools used by development and operations staff. The engineer deals with projects throughout the entire software development lifecycle, from initial coding through ongoing operations and maintenance.
What is a DevOps Consultant?
Whereas a DevOps engineer is an in-house person, a DevOps consultant is a third-party person hired to do specific DevOps-related work. DevOps consultants are often tasked with setting the systems and processes that DevOps engineers then use on a day-to-day basis. Because they’re employed on a fixed-term basis, they often have little or no long-term interest in your business.
What Are DevOps Engineering Services?
DevOps consultants should not be confused with Software and Digital Product Engineering Company’s offering DevOps engineering services, such as Encora. These companies provide complete DevOps engineering services, including:
- Continuous integration and continuous deployment
- Infrastructure support and augmentation
- Server and product maintenance
- Release management and automation
Because Encora and similar firms work with companies on an ongoing basis, they become trusted partners who are invested in your business and its long-term success.
Benefits of DevOps
Embracing the concept of DevOps can result in multiple concrete benefits for your organization. According to the 2021 Accelerate State of DevOps report, companies that employ DevOps experience 206X faster lead time from commitment to deployment, recover from incidents 2,604X faster, and have a 7X lower failure change rate. In short, DevOps can help your company get more things done, more efficiently.
Other benefits of integrating DevOps into your organization include:
- Eliminates silos, especially with remote teams
- Deploys efficiently with remote teams
- Enables continuous release and deployment
- Enhances collaboration between different teams
- Improves productivity
What Industries Benefit from DevOps?
Most industries can benefit from employing DevOps engineering services. Here are just a few examples.
FinTech
Rapidly evolving financial technology is increasingly used to manage complex payments between businesses, consumers, and other parties. One of Encora’s FinTech clients used DevOps to replace aging, bloated code that had become increasingly unreliable and difficult to maintain.
HealthTech
With the goal of enhancing the quality of medical care and improving the experience for both patients and care providers, the HealthTech industry has been a big supporter of developing technologies, including DevOps. One of Encora’s HealthTech clients used DevOps to create a new integrated platform for a more rapid response during the COVID-19 crisis.
Supply Chain & Logistics
The Supply Chain & Logistics industry embraces a variety of new technologies to meet the increased demands on supply chain and delivery services. Dubai Ports World, one of the world’s largest shipping container operators, used DevOps to automate previously manual processes and shorten product development cycles.
Digital Commerce Platforms
The Retail Industry is rushing to embrace digital commerce with the goal of delivering highly personalized and immersive shopping experiences to their online customers. Consider 1-800-FLOWERS, a long-time leader in floral delivery, which embraced DevOps to update its outmoded architecture, improve site performance, and improve its customer experience.
Real Estate
The Real Estate Industry is racing to modernize its offering to keep pace with rapid shifts in how customers discover and purchase real estate. One of Encora’s clients, a leading real estate management firm, used DevOps to modernize and simplify its core facility management processes and improve productivity.
Challenges of Continuous Engineering
While new technology might seem like a silver bullet, able to perfectly solve problems, there are still some challenges associated with DevOps and continuous engineering. To avoid poor performance, it’s important to learn from your data, do software development housekeeping, analyze risks, and know the limitations of your tools and technology. It’s also important to check that the tests being used aren’t flawed by setting up the right processes, and testing optimizations thoroughly.
How Do You Recruit DevOps Engineers?
When you want to employ DevOps services in your organization, how do you find and recruit experienced DevOps engineers?
Finding DevOps Engineers
Finding DevOps engineers for your in-house team can be challenging. Engineers with the appropriate skills and experience are in high demand. You’ll want to focus on candidates with a history of team engagement and working well with others and look beyond individuals currently working in DevOps. Instead, focus on those candidates who have the skills and experience necessary to fill your company’s specific needs.
Employing DevOps Engineering Services
If you’re having trouble finding experienced DevOps engineers or if you’re not completely sure that type of engineer you need, consider outsourcing the job to a Software and Digital Product Engineering company that offers DevOps engineering services, such as Encora. A company offering DevOps engineering services provides all the benefits of an in-house DevOps engineer without the long-term commitment. You also get the benefit of immediate impact without a long in-house training period, as Encora and other Software and Product Engineering companies have the experience of providing DevOps engineering and similar services to dozens of other clients in the past. The right DevOps Software and Product Engineering company becomes a trusted partner when your company wants to drive growth and innovation – and impact your bottom line.
