DevOps is all about streamlining and accelerating. Organizations that embrace DevOps are driven by a focus on maximizing the combination of efficiency and effectiveness—which explains why speed is the central theme of Chef’s “The State of Enterprise Applications” survey.
Chef surveyed nearly 350 application and operations professionals in an effort to understand trends in DevOps, identify how the industry is shifting and get an idea of what the future of DevOps looks like. What it found is that speed is one of the primary driving factors for organizations that function at the cutting edge of technology. Chef also found that organizations are eager to adopt new platforms that promise to help them move faster.
The Need for Speed
There are a variety of ways to measure success for application development and deployment. You can look at the features and capabilities of the app and whether it delivers the expected functionality, or you can determine success based on user feedback and how satisfied users are with the app experience. According to the Chef survey, 72 percent of organizations are focused on speed as the primary measure of a successful app deployment.
That said, it generally takes weeks—or even months—to get an app developed and deployed. More than 60 percent of survey respondents shared that it takes days or more to complete an application build, and 55 percent indicated that it takes four or more builds before an app is ready to be deployed. Almost 60 percent said it takes days or more to actually deploy the app once the final build is approved.
Platforms and Tools to Accelerate App Deployment
In the quest for speed, organizations are moving to platforms and tools that can help accelerate development and decrease the time it takes to make an app available. According to data from “The State of Enterprise Applications” survey:
- Only 9 percent of organizations are using public cloud for more than 50 percent of app deployments today, but that is expected to increase to 32 percent by 2020.
- There is a 144 percent increase expected in the next two years in the number of organizations using container technology for more than 50 percent of app deployments—to 22 percent from 9 percent today.
- The number of organizations using microservices for more than 50 percent of app deployments is expected to double—to 24 percent from 12 percent—in the next two years.
- More than 80 percent of survey respondents are adopting a multi-cloud strategy.
Putting App Deployment in High Gear
Chef is in the business of automating and streamlining app development and deployment, so it should come as no surprise that the survey included questions related to that as well. The report states, “The most successful software-centric organizations use one consistent way of building, deploying, and managing applications.”
More than 9 out of 10 (93 percent) of survey participants agreed that an application packaging solution that allows deployment to any environment would be valuable. This is especially true when developers have to deal with hybrid or multi-cloud environments.
If speed is your primary measure of success for app deployment, you need to make sure you have the tools and processes necessary to develop and deploy applications as quickly as possible. Chef’s report shows organizations are well on their way.
