Managed DevOps: Why It’s Needed. Where to Get It.
May 13, 2021
From infrastructure to disaster recovery, just about anything in the IT space can be delivered as a service. And, in many cases, as a managed service. That includes Managed DevOps or DevOps as a Service.
The idea is that the customer doesn’t have to invest in the resources required for rendering the services. The IT service provider covers these costs – for a fee. The provider also manages the service, freeing up customers’ internal resources and offering them expertise that they might not have in-house.
DevOps and App Development
So, what do managed services have to do with application development? After all, it’s not uncommon for organizations to outsource app development to a third-party company. But not all app development companies are created equal. Given that speed-to-market and other factors can drastically affect competitive advantage, organizations want to work with app developers that are highly efficient and can release software fast and reliably.
App development companies that employ DevOps fit the bill. DevOps is an approach that promotes better communication and collaboration between the development and IT operations teams involved in developing software.
It combines agile, continuous delivery, iterative app development, automation, and programmable infrastructure deployment and maintenance, enabling teams to work smarter and faster. DevOps also entails practices to automate processes that historically have been manual, slow, and require assistance from other teams. The end result: better, more reliable products delivered quicker.
The Case for Outsourcing DevOps
Couldn’t companies that want to leverage DevOps just develop the required expertise internally? Unfortunately, adopting DevOps isn’t easy. DevOps requires significant culture changes, such as removing traditional departmental silos, building trust between developers and systems administrators, and aligning technology projects to business requirements. It often entails altering the software delivery chain and redefining job roles. None of it happens overnight.
Even if the necessary changes can be implemented and embraced, neither in-house training nor hiring DevOps experts is cheap. Plus, IT professionals are already stretched just trying to keep on top of all their current responsibilities. Many simply don’t have time to build DevOps expertise. In terms of hiring DevOps experts, demand is high and availability low, making recruitment difficult and expensive.
Even if it’s possible to build internal DevOps expertise, there are still challenges. Among them: ensuring team members are familiar with and can efficiently employ the various tools that platforms like Amazon Web Services (AWS) offer for optimizing the use of DevOps for app development.
The Benefits of Managed DevOps
Many companies opt to procure DevOps as a managed service as part of their app development engagements. Service providers that offer this invest in the necessary staff and other resources to meet customers’ needs for DevOps-facilitated app development.
They usually provide numerous services and technology solutions to simplify provisioning and managing infrastructure, deploy application code, automate software release processes, monitor application, and infrastructure performance, and optimize each stage of the software development lifecycle. Many also offer teams with platform-specific expertise, like AWS, so they can take full advantage of the resources associated with those platforms.
While the benefits associated with Managed DevOps vary based on the service provider’s capabilities and customers’ needs, they usually include:
- Access to expertise that includes a DevOps approach to cloud-native app development specific to your chosen cloud platform-
- No infrastructure or staffing investments
- Project management by the service provider
- Freeing up internal resources for other initiatives
- Mentorship for in-house teams
- Faster software development life cycle
- Enhanced deployment frequency
- Better alignment with business goals
- Reduction of waste
Managed DevOps from ClearScale
ClearScale stands out among service providers that offer Managed DevOps. Providing cloud DevOps services is “business as usual” at ClearScale. It’s the way we work, and the foundation of all client engagements.
Our business is architecting customized solutions to meet specific needs, overcome some of the most complex challenges, and speed up time to market. That entails simplifying infrastructure provisioning and management, application code deployment, the automation of software release processes, application and infrastructure performance monitoring, and the optimization of each software development lifecycle stage with the practice of DevOps.
We know the cloud. We know app development. And we have depth and breadth of experience in cloud-native app development – particularly in the AWS cloud.
We’re also an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner with a competency in DevOps consulting services. That means we’ve demonstrated expertise in delivering DevOps solutions on the AWS Cloud. It also means we’re well versed in the resources AWS offers for continuous integration and continuous delivery, microservices, infrastructure as code, monitoring and logging, platform as a service, version control, and more.
ClearScale DevOps Resources
For information on how you can benefit from ClearScale’s cloud managed services, contact us for a free consultation.
You can also take advantage of these resources:
Webinar: How to Build Modern Applications and Innovate Faster with DevOps
Case Study: Shinola Detroit’s Cloud Infrastructure Powers Agile DevOps Team and Seamless Scaling