Key Takeaways from Continuous Discussions (#c9d9) Podcast, Episode 83: Year-End Special – 2018 DevOps trends and predictions

In a recent episode of Continuous Discussions (#c9d9), we were joined by expert panelists to reflect on the driving forces of DevOps in 2017 and what new trends will shape the industry in 2018 and beyond. The panel included: Jay Lyman, principal analyst at 451 Research; Mike Kavis , VP and principal architect at CloudTP; Tom Smith , research analyst at DZone; Torsten Volk , managing research director for Hybrid Cloud, the Software Defined Data Center, Machine Learning and Cognitive Computing at Enterprise Management Associates; and, our very own Sam Fell and Anders Wallgren. Continue reading for some of their top takeaways!

Per @ripcitylyman - the biggest thing that stood out to me was #security and #devops - injecting security thinking (and people) earlier into the software delivery process #c9d9 #devsecops pic.twitter.com/1w90Z2mwMD

— CloudBees (@electriccloud) December 12, 2017

Volk shares one of his key focus areas in 2017 and hopes for 2018: “I’m praying for the software-defined data center and the hybrid cloud. I'm looking at how infrastructure can get out of the way of progress in DevOps - it can be conducive instead of being a bottleneck. That praying is a key topic that I want to see much, much more prominently featured.”

Containers and microservices were big in 2017 from Smith ’s perspective: “The takeaways are the realization that DevOps and cloud are synonymous, and when you put the two together, they beget containers and microservices. The adoption of containers, which we all thought was coming, came faster than we could even anticipate.”

Only 11 of organizations are pursuing #DigitalTransformation technologies | @ctsmithiii @dzone #c9d9 pic.twitter.com/x4gCv8LFGv

— CloudBees (@electriccloud) December 12, 2017

Kavis spoke to the advancements and maturity he is seeing from DevOps: “I've been working in the DevOps space for about three, four years, and we used to do assessments and maturity models. I think DevOps has moved from the technology - not saying technology is going away - but people are now trying to solve the operating model problem. How do we balance having some control with letting the business units deploy as frequent as they need and still be compliant?”

We’re going to hear more about open source in software and DevOps, according to Lyman : “Of companies using at least 60 percent of their DevOps portfolios in open source, 54 percent reached the fully deployed DevOps state with all their development occurring via DevOps models. Only 30 percent of the companies that had 25 percent to 60 percent of open source tools reached that state, and only 20 percent of companies with low levels of open source usage had managed to progress it. Open source software can be a catalyst in DevOps, and I think that there's a growing awareness and leadership is seeming to get this.”

There is a big push to #AI per @madgreek65 . I expect to see a lot more data scientists with access, and businesses reinvesting in the data in 2018 #devops pic.twitter.com/hSJGOoB4Ct

— CloudBees (@electriccloud) December 12, 2017

Fell talks about the importance of bringing all issues into the fold: “As organizations start to bring the DevOps initiatives under a fold of governance where they have to coordinate it with all the other work that's happening and all the other deliverables and deliveries that they're making, you can't have one chink in the armor that never gets addressed.”

Wallgren has big plans for automation in 2018: “My prediction is that automation will be King in 2018. We'll really start to accelerate the adoption of DevOps and accelerate how quickly we receive the benefits. If you get a lot of that time back, you can do cool stuff with it.”

"The subscription economy is definitely here. People want on-demand access to whatever they want" @samueldfell #c9d9 pic.twitter.com/VP7PHbsdmv

— CloudBees (@electriccloud) December 12, 2017

Volk thinks serverless containers will be on people’s minds in 2018: “Serverless containers are kind of an intermediate step between containers and ultimately, consuming the services directly. I always say, if I have a company or development team I tell them to explore serverless first, then explore serverless containers, then explore containers, and so on down the stack. It will be much, much more manageable.”

Smith also has thoughts about automation for 2018: “Automation is going to be big in 2018, and not necessarily AI/ML-driven automation. Automation of continuous testing, including security - and I think that's how we end up with DevSecOps, by eliminating glitch risk and speeding release cycles.   Automation is critical because we don't have the talent, and we're not going to have the talent for the next five to ten years to do this.”

Automation will be king in 2018 - really start to accelerate the benefit of #DevOps @anders_wallgren #c9d9 #does17 #innovation pic.twitter.com/nxjf6jSJRt

— CloudBees (@electriccloud) December 12, 2017

Kavis highlights a number of things he expects to rise in 2018: “I expect to see a big push in machine learning and artificial intelligence. We're also seeing a lot of companies set to start exposing data to their data scientists at speeds they couldn't do before. I expect to see a lot more data scientists with access, where before, they were kind of handcuffed.”

Responsiveness is on Lyman ’s list of trends: “Responsiveness is a big part of DevOps. The companies, organizations and teams that can respond to the real-world scenarios of this magical technology are going to be the ones that are winning.  I think we'll see that will become a key capability, to be able to respond. There's any number of things that you're going to have to respond to. And I think AI and machine learning will introduce more of those.”

Per @TorstenVolk , at #reInvent one thing that really stood out to me was #Serverless containers and I expect to look more into this in 2018 #c9d9 pic.twitter.com/qi7qb05zq8

— CloudBees (@electriccloud) December 12, 2017

Watch the full episode: