Having a DevOps strategy helps drive tangible business benefits to enterprises, according to a new study released by CA Technologies, entitled DevOps: The Worst-Kept Secret to Winning in the Application Economy.
Vanson Bourne conducted the survey with 1 425 senior IT and business leaders worldwide and found 88% of them already have, or plan to adopt, a DevOps strategy.
According to the study, respondents have experienced anywhere from a 14% to 21% improvement in business in the form of increased numbers of customers, faster time-to-market and improved quality and performance of applications.
US respondents have seen more improvements than the global average, for instance about 27% increased collaboration between departments, a 26% reduction in time spent fixing and maintaining applications and a 24% to 25% increase in the number of customers as well as software and services that would otherwise not be possible.
“DevOps is a powerful revenue driver. About 34 percent of respondents working at organizations with greater than average profit growth said they had already adopted DevOps while only 17 percent of those with less than average profit growth had done so,” says Andi Mann, vice president, CA Technologies.
Andrea Lodolo, chief technology officer of CA Southern Africa, adds that the argument against DevOps is over. “Global business and IT leaders need DevOps to transform their enterprises into application-led businesses drive their competitiveness and create business growth.”
Other key findings from the survey include:
* DevOps adopters are likely to invest in people and tools over the next year as part of their implementation of the strategy. The top investment item is hiring new resources with necessary skills (63% global and 72% in the US), followed by engaging a consulting firm (51% global and 53% in the US). More training for dev and ops personnel was cited by 46%.
* A need to improve quality and performance of the applications as well as the end customer experience are major drivers (44% and 42% in the US, respectively).
* Nearly all organizations with greater than average profit growth have experienced tangible benefits by adopting a DevOps strategy. About 95% to 97% of these companies have seen increased frequency of deployments of software and services as well as applications made available across more platforms.
* Security and organisational complexity remain as major obstacles in adopting the strategy (28% and 27% respectively).
