There’s no doubt DevOps is picking up steam, but just how quickly depends on who you are talking to. One survey projection indicates 55 percent have already adopted DevOps practices and an additional 31 percent plan to do so. A more measured Gartner take says it will be a mainstream strategy for 25 percent of the Global 2000 by 2016. Still, Walter R. Kuketz, CTO of Collaborative Consulting and a software performance expert, says a key obstacle to large enterprise adoption is extending DevOps to external outsourcers and systems integrators (SIs).
The Enterprisers Project (TEP): One recent article asks "Will DevOps Kill IT Outsourcing?" What’s your response?
Kuketz: I think they are at odds because a lot of those outsourcing deals, or big SI deals, are driven by the contract, and if it’s not in contract they won’t do it. If you don’t address agility and DevOps right there, they just won’t do it or they’ll hit you with a change order that is going to cost you more money. If you want to be able to get a code change back within 24 hours, you have to put that in the contract. A giant supply chain could involve SAP, Deloitte, Accenture, and Cognizant, for example, as well as smaller niche SIs involved in particular products, so code changes are a huge challenge.
TEP: Are SIs getting the DevOps message?
Kuketz: I think they see DevOps as a trend they want to be part of, and to show they can help, but I think it gets bogged down in the implementation. I’m sure they’re willing to do a pilot but think it’s a long way from that pilot to making it institutionalized. It has to be in the best interest of the SIs to see this is a value for the client. And, in some cases maybe one will want to show they’re more DevOps than the other and fuel a little competition.
TEP: What steps should an enterprise take to get their SIs moving in the right direction that they themselves want to go in?
Kuketz: It’s a matter of going to their best partners or inviting in a new innovative SI to partner through this process. Lay out the foundation and the goals and work with them to get their buy-in to do this new way of work. Ask if they are going to use a remove development center, how are they going to lower the barrier to change, how quickly can they respond. Many SIs now do have onshore develop centers in the U.S., which is a step in the right direction.
TEP: How would you characterize large enterprise adoption of DevOps at this point?
Kuketz: I believe it’s still very early stage and very far away from mainstream adoption. In my client universe, I haven’t seen many go big. They’re experimenting and it tends to be more project-based. Large enterprises are trying to understand the true value of what they are getting. One of the challenges for DevOps is that people see this amorphous thing that works really well if you’re in a small startup because everyone understands what the goal is; but as it scales up that’s where I think it has a problem.
TEP: What do they need to do to take the next step?
Kuketz: It’s really about defining what is the value of change and what are they trying to achieve: is it time to market, is it getting code to production every day, is there a new version that happens every day? In the Fortune 500 enterprises there is a lot of self-reflection; they are starting to remove their own barriers between the database team and the operations team and the VMware team, and the list goes on and on. None of these teams really work together or have worked together. In some cases, believe it or not, in performance testing we’ve pulled in the application architect, the database administrator, operations, and they’ve never spoken to each other before. This is a huge culture change for them. They need to start to shape their organizations into a multi-disciplinary team and not so much along the layers of the stack.
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In addition to helping to start the company, Walter R. Kuketz serves as Chief Technology Officer at Collaborative Consulting. In his role, Walter works alongside high-profile clients such as Johnson & Johnson and CVS to apply technology for maximum business value and advantage. He implements enterprise architecture in large, complex systems while helping to align business needs with IT – ensuring new software is efficient and valuable. Walter works on-site for delivery of software performance engineering advisory services and technology risk assessment of systems, which evaluate performance and scalability of new software. He then assesses and advises on how it will meet specific business goals.
