Automation advancements bring netops and devops teams into the future

Recently we’ve watched netops and devops teams struggle to navigate complex networks, regulate change management, meet competitive deadlines, and break through the barriers posed by siloed IT structures. They are plagued with challenges that make the thought of five-nine SLAs a farfetched dream. The top priority in these tough times is implementing a system that helps them achieve their goals faster, without compromising quality. That’s we’re seeing automation come in.

Automation is no longer a new concept. It is an essential part of every application lifecycle, from the development stage to the final deployment. Gone are the days when users, to copy a file, would open the command prompt, navigate to the directory, then manually identify the file’s final location and specify the command with the right syntax.  This process was not only incredibly tedious – it was extremely error-prone. Now, users can simply drag and drop files to copy them. The functionality remains the same, but automation does the heavy lifting instead of the user.

Netops and devops teams are now embracing the power of automation and applying it to different phases of an application’s lifecycle. This allows the enterprise to predefine a process that incorporates disparate tools, helping to eliminate silos and encourage a new level of collaboration not often seen between teams. To put it simply, automations is making everyone’s lives easier.

Now, let’s talk more specifically about the impact automation can have on netops and devops.

Netops

For netops, agility is a top priority.  In years past, agility was never associated with the network. Teams were only focused on keeping the network safe and stable. Making even the smallest change in the network was an arduous process that in turn threatened stability. With instability comes outages, which doesn’t bode well for the network team.

netops teams have proved slow to adopt automation as they are typically hesitant to disrupt the network’s status quo. In fact, ADCs, firewalls, DNS technology and other network services are all still the same. The vendors and market leaders may change, but not the way netops teams deploy their services.

Traditionally, SLAs for change take from two weeks to two months to complete. This has been the case for almost a decade, so introducing a new way of doing things certainly won’t be easy. But to the new levels of both demand and complexity, enterprises cannot afford application outages. Luckily, thanks to the normalization of automation, netops teams have new and sophisticated tools at their disposal to prevent these hiccups.

Because networks have become a lot more complex with comparatively fewer resources than before, automation offers an efficient way to navigate to entire application management process while also avoiding outages. If they want to keep pace with changing demands, netops would be remised not to get on-board.

Devops

devops teams play an instrumental role in bringing development and operation engineers together to efficiently deploy software updates. As this has become common practice within IT departments, it has revolutionized the way teams work together, and has considerably improved final outputs.

However, this level of collaboration alone isn’t enough to take enterprises to the next level. There are still manual interventions, communication delays, and process gaps that can hold devops back. That’s where automation comes in. By bringing in automation, devops teams can deliver releases faster and with more precision.

With automation, devops can ensure that processes are consistent across the board. This helps the team generate reports in real time and attain a consolidated view of their application. It also makes the development and implementation of application enhancements across multiple environments much easier.  

When you bring automation to devops, you are not only automating the software development lifecycle. Instead, you’re applying automation to the broader development process, including infrastructure. So, technically speaking, you could decide to deploy a standard infrastructure and go live within an hour. If there is an issue and you want to go back to the previous working state, you can simply flip the switch.

devops automation is not a one-time task to check off your to-do list. If you stay in-tuned to it, you can make sure all your tasks are complete.

Conclusion

As we move full force ahead into the future, we are also expected to react to business demands with more and more agility. As technology teams transition from business suppliers to business enablers, we need more support and more investment from our enterprises. We need to simplify and streamline our processes and minimize manual intervention, all by harnessing the power of automation.   

Automation is the next natural step for both netops and devops teams. Automating independent tasks by applying templates will help accelerate the bulk of the work and simplify the entire deployment process. In fact, the future lies in the ability to automate whole infrastructures. New advancements are made in automation every day, and it will usher in the future for netops and devops teams striving to stay one step ahead of the industry.