Let’s face it, implementing DevOps is hard! But I believe it is even more challenging to implement enterprise devops. I have come across countless incidences where startup companies struggle to find out “how a dedicated devops team should function” in an enterprise scenario. Most of them are confused regarding the goals of the dedicated DevOps team and how to achieve them. As per my observations, I have listed down a few of the mistakes companies made during their transitioning phase from DevOps startups to enterprises.
Communication and collaboration
Effectively known as DevOps silos, it’s the most significant barrier one can face while transitioning from startup to enterprise devops. Traditionally development and operations teams used to work separately. But, as we all know, devops isn’t just a combination of the development and operations team, rather it should be the whole package.
To curb this, enterprises should adopt the DevOps culture to minimize operational friction between different teams. For example, Etsy, an American eCommerce company, struggled with the same issue for many years. Back in 2009, they concluded that their deployment rate should be faster, so they adopted DevOps culture. Soon after, their operation friction reduced drastically, and they were able to deploy 60 times a day.
Tech stack incompatibility
Startups moving towards enterprise devops always face tech incompatibility. While in a startup scenario, people tend to use the first available resource to do the job. Scalability was the last thing in their mind at that point of business. As they grow bigger, they realize that migrating to modern architecture makes more sense. But then that would require a whole revamping of older technologies that they were previously using.
I believe companies need to switch to a microservices architecture while transitioning from a traditional technological stack. The Microservices approach will help developers to develop important features autonomously.
When I read an article about Netflix adopting DevOps, I knew that everyone is on the same path to making this mistake at least once. The article sheds some light on Netflix’s initial days and how they moved from a monolithic architecture to a cluster of 700+ microservices for faster deployments. Now they are a billion-dollar company with 222 million subscribers.
Dealing with security concerns
The moment you have decided to switch to enterprise devops, you need to keep security as one of your prime priorities. Why so? It’s because devops deals with applications, containers, and microservices that share account credentials, tokens, ssh keys, etc, on a daily basis. Without proper security measures, the stacks are pretty high.
By taking protective measures, you can ensure maximum security. You can start by -
- Maintaining continuous and automated scanning at the database level
- Undertaking deep recursive scanning across all dependencies and container images
- Enabling universal security and compliance standards for all teams
- Setting up governance teams that monitor rules and compliance policies
Conclusion
Bottom line - moving towards startup devops to enterprise devops is not all that hard as it seems. Popular names like Etsy, Netflix, FIH, Nordstrom, etc. have all implemented enterprise devops at some point during their journey. It’s all about the necessary steps needed to be taken to ensure the successful implementation of enterprise devops.
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