DevOps is for all of Us - Fight Me
Platform groups are the best place to scale DevOps. Today, I'm saying it's for all. Hey, I'm a management consultant. It depends.
Marketing has taken over the world. Someone thinks of a way to abstract the network control plane, and we suddenly have Software-Defined Networking (SDN). It’s not like we weren’t using software to define the network beforehand. The same goes for DevOps. For better or worse, the concept I presented yesterday has dominated the industry—developers running the operations vs. operators.
At its essence, DevOps is about using development abstractions to integrate software practices into operations. It enables modern software deployment models that support Continous Development and Continous Integration (CI/CD). In other words, create software faster and more reliably.
Similarly, Software-defined Networking enables deploying and managing networks using a centralized control plane and consistent API. There has always been software at the core of networking.
In a large enterprise, the platform groups become the owner of these processes. IMO (I can use shorthand because this is a #CTOShort), the talent needed to abstract the infrastructure and provide a consistent interface and operating model belongs to the platform group. This group provides cloud/data center control plane to interface with CI/CD, Automated Security, Configuration Management, and Compliance Systems.
Again, not a complete thought, just a short. Check out some of my other stuff on platform teams over on thectoadvisor.com