8 DevOps Trends to be Aware of for 2024
With the introduction of the DevOps movement over a decade ago, the IT industry has seen a major growth in organizational efficiency. With the global pandemic further pushing all industries to adapt and shift online, the need for such developmental processes has risen manyfold. The DevOps market is predicted to reach USD $30 billion by 2028 with a growth rate of approximately 20% CAGR (Global Market Insights).
Approximately, 80% of organizations are already in the middle of this full-fledged adoption (Puppet). The increase in demand for test automations for cloud-natives and migrated firms has created an opportunity for DevOps to secure a stronghold for decades to come.
Here are some future trends to look out for to stay above the curve.
DevOps Trends to be aware of in 2024
1. Increased Focus on Platform Engineerinng
Platform Engineering can help increase the rate at which businesses produce value. It is one of the fast-growing major trends according to “The State of Platform Engineering Report” (Puppet). With new innovations in the DevOps journey, approximately 93% of organizations believe that platform engineering is the right practice for better organizational efficiency and 94% of the respondents agree to it helping realize DevOps goals better (DevOps.com).
2. Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
In contrast to traditional data structure infrastructure, IaC maintains the data infrastructure as code. It helps in eliminating risks linked with manual data configuration and builds a more reliable infrastructure. According to consolidated reports, the IaC market is predicted to grow at a rate of 24% CAGR by 2027, touching USD $2.3 billion in the global market (MarketandMarkets). Integrating IaC with DevOps can help accelerate continuous delivery (CD).
3. Increasing need for DevOps Evolution through Edge Computing
Edge Computing is rapidly growing with a predicted CAGR of 15.7% by the end of 2028 (MarketsandMarkets). With the consistently evolving IT world, a successful DevOps integration with Edge Computing will present new innovations, scalability and efficiency in operations. The combination of Edge and DevOps builds a reliable network of real-time data processing, data insights and application updates.
4. DevOps-as-a-Service (DaaS)
DaaS is a result of the ever-changing DevOps market and the evolution of cloud-based offerings. By deploying DevOps as a service, not only will the overall efficiency be increased (faster time-to-market, reduced manual errors, reduced operational costs) but the cultural barrier between different organizational teams will also thin out, making cooperation and information sharing easier.
5. Service Virtualization in DevOps (KUBERNETES)
Service Virtualization simulates software components that may not be available to test otherwise.
6. Increasing Focus on DevOps Assembly Lines
DevOps Assembly Pipelines are an amalgamation of existing pipelines like CI/CD pipelines. They streamline processes by automating and combining team efforts – configuration management for operators; adding additional security layers through DevSecOps; automation scripts for testers, etc. The combination of DevOps processes and tools along with CI/CD pipelines enables quicker and continuous delivery of software to the end-users. While the primary aim of CI/CD pipelines is continuous delivery of products, the DevOps revolution is a major steppingstone to ensure that this organizational goal is successfully and efficiently achieved.
The major benefits that DevOps Assembly Lines provide are:
- Toolchain collaboration
- End-to-end visibility
- Continuous Delivery
7. Artificial Intelligence (AI) advancements in DevOps
With a global growth rate of 37.3% CAGR (Forbes) over the next forecasted period 2023-2030, the AI market is sure to stay and become more prominent.
AI, as a catalyst for the ever-evolving software development processes, can help organizations in extracting new insights and opportunities. Integrating AI with DevOps processes can help in automating testing processes that are time consuming and prone to errors. With predictive analysis of the running codes and systems, AI will alert users of the potential threats to the software even before the error occurs, making it easier to test for anomalies. Integrating AI with research tools can help recognize the ongoing trends and analyze where an organization is lacking and in need of touch-ups.
8. The Future of Serverless Architecture
The rising need for digital transformation, especially after the global pandemic, has fueled a bright future for many advancements in the IT industry. One such advancement is the Serverless Architecture which allows developers to build and run software applications without having to maintain the infrastructure. The global serverless architecture market is projected to grow at a rate of 25% CAGR over the forecasted period between 2023 – 2032 (Global Market Insights).
Serverless Computing has allowed all the software infrastructure to be saved on the cloud which can be outsourced for production of applications, making it easier for developers to focus on their product instead of the intricacies of maintaining the infrastructure. With DevOps being widely adopted by organizations to streamline processes and optimize resources, the appeal for serverless cloud integration is expanding to smooth this global adoption over.
9. Changing the world through AI and Automation
2023 has been the year of Generative AI, be it creating visual, audio, or written content. Generative AI is equipped with machine learning (ML) capabilities allowing end users to create content from all arrays of internet knowledge. However, automating AI/ or Automation (IA) to perform tasks has been all the rage among organizations looking to save time and minimize errors in their processes. IA is an umbrella consisting of AI, business process management (BPM), and robotic process automation (RPA) to help streamline processes and enable smart decision making.
Setbacks and Opportunities in Adoption of DevOps
1. Lack of Standardization in DevOps Processes
With no standard procedures for DevOps processes, most teams find it difficult to produce desirable organizational results. These difficulties spread across various tangents, including an array of tools to choose from to decide the best one; no standard definition on which combination of tools, frameworks and teams to choose for an optimum usage of resources to produce results.
2. Shortage of Related Skillsets
Skill Shortage is a leading challenge hindering the growth of the DevOps infrastructure. While 21% of organizations are still resisting the change onset by the DevOps resolution, almost 33% of the willing workforce is lacking in necessary skills to manifest the full potential of DevOps processes. This cultural setback is widened by teams operating in silos making it difficult to deploy DevOps strategies as a whole for the entire organization. Breaking down organizational silos and improving communication and cooperation between isolated teams; and improvement in providing necessary skills/training to operate DevOps models is a milestone that all organizations should reach before further DevOps deployment.
