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Mark Troester
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Mark Troester, Senior Director, Progress Pacific
DevOps is something almost everyone is thinking about—but not everyone has an action plan. Part of the problem may be that DevOps might sound like yet another complex, specialized initiative to be squeezed onto an already full plate.
However, DevOps is something you can and should begin to integrate into what you are doing right now. It boils down to this imperative: moduNo matter the style of development, tools and techniques should be integrated into workflow strategically to make people more productive.
Business application developers, for example, should find deployment to be smooth and simple, with a lot of the complexity managed in the background. Code-style developers, on the other hand, look for configuration-based automation—and they want complete control and visibility.
DevOps is About Eliminating Development-to-Production Issues
DevOps is all about eliminating the issues that sometimes arise between development and IT operations. Although you may not have an official DevOps initiative, you still have to manage that development-to-production process and all that it entails. You need to make sure that where IT Operations is not included in the initial application planning process, a developer doesn’t just “throw the app over the fence” to have someone else deploy, manage and monitor it.
Similarly, with agile-style development, which is focused on paring back development cycles, simply getting an application finished means little if you can’t test, deploy and manage the different environments. You can select a DevOps approach that is appropriate for the type of developers involved in the application process.
Leveraging a Low Code Development Approach
GUI style developers and business analyst-type developers probably need a DevOps process that is obfuscated. The same thing holds true for enabling a citizen, or line of business, developer.
This category of developer simply won’t care, or at least won’t want to be bothered, by all that is involved in deploying the application to different environments, managing different environments, managing version control, or anything else too “techy.” For this audience, making use of a low code approach requires that the app dev platform take care of all of the deployment work automatically while providing the IT organization oversight and choice of the appropriate cloud infrastructure.
Low-code development platforms are gaining momentum. Developers and IT organizations can boost their ability to deliver by getting on board. A high-productivity PaaS solution such as Progress® Pacific™ can fit the bill, improving productivity and providing IT with visibility and control over the direction and output of work.
Use a High Control Approach for Code-Style Developers
The other side of the coin is the code-style developer assembling applications from components and writing code to glue them together. While these developers are more familiar with the deployment process, you should still try to use automation that allows them to focus on developing the app—automation designed to facilitate DevOps.
To accomplish that, you can rely on a platform that is focused on deployment, such as Modulus™. Such a high control platform allows you to automate deployment, scaling and more, while providing you the ability to monitor and adjust. While Modulus provides more control appropriate to code-style developers and IT Ops professionals, it is still automated and allows the developer to focus on development, not deployment tasks.
DevOps is worth leveraging as a means to achieve a range of development goals–and something you can do right away.
Author information
Vice President, Application Development and Deployment, Progress Software at Progress
Mark Troester is the Vice President of Progress Application Development and Deployment at Progress Software. Mark has extensive experience in bringing application development and data integration products to market. Mark previously led product marketing efforts at Sonatype, SAS and Progress DataDirect. Before moving into marketing, Mark worked as a developer and developer manager for start-ups and enterprises alike.
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