DevOps has come a long way from being a good-to-implement practice to becoming a must-implement practice. Companies recognize that the only way to thrive in this ever-evolving market is to adopt DevOps and become nimble-footed.
According to Puppet’s 2021 State of DevOps report, 83% of IT decision-makers have implemented DevOps practices in their company.
To stay agile, companies must understand what’s happening in the world of DevOps. This will help them to keep pace with new technological and business developments and plan a strategy for the year ahead.
To make things simple, we have shortlisted six DevOps trends to watch for in 2022.
But before that, let’s quickly look at the trends that dominated the year 2021.
- Security became as big a priority as deploying software quickly
- End-to-end DevOps platforms with built-in automation and integrations with other DevOps tools became a norm
- The Shift Left concept became important as it placed equal responsibility on developers to take ownership of security
- Developers are now taking the lead in solving tech challenges and taking the company toward an innovative future
6 DevOps trends to watch for in 2022
Automation
DevOps empowers developers to develop and deploy software faster. The side-effect of it is that developers could compromise on the security of the software. One way to address this challenge is by modernizing the current tools and introducing automation. Automation has always been an integral part of DevOps. By automating repetitive tasks, teams can launch products quickly. However, very few companies have implemented automation. Research shows that a quarter of DevOps time is spent on manual continuous integration and continuous development (CI/CD) tasks. Automation will reduce that time and help developers to become more productive. It will help them to focus more on building better-quality products. 2022 will see an increase in DevOps automation. Companies will also be using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to identify issues in the delivery pipeline and apply solutions to mitigate them.
Kubernetes
Kubernetes is responsible for running the workloads quickly and ensuring continuous development and delivery. However, it is evolving beyond container orchestration. Kubernetes is pluggable by design. So, 2022 will see companies leveraging this feature to experiment and build a robust and reliable cluster. It will be regarded as a dynamic resource. Companies will also be using Kubernetes Operator Framework to automate the repetitive and manual tasks involved in deploying an application and enable developers to focus on the more important work.
DevSecOps
Despite understanding the need for implementing DevSecOps, only 30% of companies have fully implemented it. Lack of training and visibility are cited as the reasons for delays in DevSecOps implementation. However, the good news is that 42% of companies have committed to fully implementing DevSecOps next year. To successfully implement DevSecOps, companies must frequently review the security updates, establish and maintain DevSecOps best practices, and invest in training the development and security teams on DevSecOps. The increasing popularity of cloud-native applications makes them vulnerable to security threats. Hence, companies have to prioritize DevSecOps to build safe applications in 2022.
Serverless and microservices architecture
The year 2022 will see an increase in the adoption of serverless and microservices architecture. Microservices and serverless computing work well together. Companies don’t have to worry about maintaining the infrastructure with serverless computing. They can focus on critical tasks. Microservices architecture breaks the application into small, independent units. It allows developers to scale a particular part of the application rather than the entire application at once. So, even if there’s a minor issue in the application, developers can resolve it without disrupting the entire application. With companies prioritizing speed and innovation in product development, serverless and microservices architecture will play a critical part in realizing those goals.
GitOps
For a long time, developers have relied on Git while building applications. This made GitOps popular. GitOps helps developers to manage the infrastructure, tools, and processes effectively. It leverages the DevOps framework of CI/CD, version control, collaboration, and application development to automate infrastructure provisioning. Given that mature DevOps companies deploy codes to production multiple times, GitOps will help in generating the same infrastructure environment every time the code is deployed. It will help the developers automate deployment and gain more control over the codes. In 2022, companies will witness the continued adoption of GitOps.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
2022 will witness IaC becoming a mainstay in DevOps. IaC enables developers to manage and provision the infrastructure through code instead of doing it manually. This helps the developers to bring consistency in setup and configuration, improve productivity, enhance operational efficiency, and reduce human errors. CI/CD requires continuous automation and monitoring from integration to delivery and deployment. However, the environment has to be consistent. The developers or the Ops team cannot configure the environment in different ways. It has to be aligned to prevent errors and inconsistency. Considering that IaC generates the same environment every time it is used, it removes the need to configure or maintain separate environment deployments and ensures consistency in the production environment.
Conclusion
As the technology landscape changes, the need for DevOps will increase too.
For example, a recent article in Geek Time discussed how DevOps would play a significant role in determining the winner of the Metaverse race. DevOps will ensure seamless and continuous delivery even in a complex Metaverse environment. It will enable the company to launch products in the Metaverse at speed and cost-effectively by utilizing the cloud efficiently.
Even outside the Metaverse, DevOps will continue to help companies to remain agile and build innovative products quickly and at scale. If your company has not implemented DevOps yet, it’s time to embrace it to thrive in a hyper-competitive environment.
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