Expectations related to DevOps adoption by companies remain high, but even more significant are the benefits obtained by those who have already climbed on board with this solution.

It’s obvious that experience contributes to the success. Businesses are gradually discovering what works and does not work. And we can get some insight as to what works from a survey conducted on behalf of CA Technologies by Vanson Bourne on a sample of 1,300 senior IT decision-makers worldwide is that DevOps is forefront of revenue growth for enterprises.

The study, 2013 TechInsights Report: What Smart Businesses Know About DevOps, when examined in detail, contains some interesting data. For example, DevOps implementation resulted in business benefits and businesses experienced anywhere from a 17 to 23 percent improvement in the form of increased revenue, faster time-to-market, improved competitive positioning, and enhanced customer experience.

Measurable benefits from DevOps

The report confirms that two-thirds of IT leaders are deploying new technologies, updating processes and collaborating across IT domains to implement DevOps and achieve these goals. More than 99 percent U.S. respondents recognize a greater need for DevOps strategies now than before, while those who have implemented the methodology saw a 22 percent increase in customers and 19 percent more revenue. In the US alone, the percentage of increase in revenue is more than 66 percent.

The reasons for implementing DevOps culture is largely a focus on satisfying customer demands. According to IT decision makers surveyed, the key DevOps drivers range from greater collaboration between development and operations teams (61 percent), the increase use of mobile devices (52 percent), and the increasing need to develop and deploy cloud-based applications (43 percent).

“In today’s world of mobile apps and online consumer reviews, companies are under enormous pressure to deliver higher quality applications faster than ever before,” said Shridhar Mittal, general manager, Application Delivery at CA Technologies. “Companies, which have been around for more than 20-30 years, face big challenges as they have legacy systems.  Those who are willing to undergo internal transformation can win the competition in the fast-changing markets.”

The respondents also pointed to the growing need to develop mobile applications and an increased pressure to deliver applications in virtualized and cloud environments as some key DevOps drivers. In terms of percentage, number one driver is a strategy fixed primarily on external metrics such as increased revenue, faster time-to-market and improved customer experience (49 percent), followed by internal metrics such as lower costs and improved efficiencies (38 percent).

Who has experience investing more?

The survey shows that in most large companies DevOps culture is all about people, processes, and technology. IT organizations prefer knowledge of business strategies (47 percent), processes (42 percent) and communication skills (36 percent) over technical skills such as programming/scripting (24 percent), QA/testing (19 percent) and experience with specific tools (12 percent).

More than 70 percent IT managers said that investing in new tools and training for development and operations personnel is required as part of DevOps investments, while 53 percent foresee having to hire new personnel with the necessary skills. Among the expected benefits of the DevOps is improvement in areas such as collaboration between departments (20 to 23 percent), quality of deployed applications, customer numbers and time-to-market speed.

Other benefits include increased frequency of deployment of software/services, increased collaboration between departments, new software/services that would otherwise not be possible, a reduction in spend on development and operations, and fewer employees working on developing and deploying of software,

We are entering a mature phase where companies realize they need to be more structured in their approach to the agile development. But the top reasons preventing them from doing so are organizational complexity (35 percent), role alignment (28 percent) and security or compliance concerns (25 percent), followed by lack of understanding of the phases of the entire development lifecycle (24 percent) and lack of clarity over whose budget is responsible for what (24 percent).

CA Technologies has taken the lead in identifying the benefits and challenges of adopting DevOps. Mittal said the report paints a clear picture of what companies can expect to gain by embracing the new strategy and transforming their IT organization.  DevOps is evolving from the theoretical into an essential strategic approach for all businesses.

The report advice that for IT managers to fruit success in DevOps, enterprises must designate an executive-level DevOps evangelist; appoint DevOps-focused team members from each required domain; make a must-have skills list; streamline processes to incorporate input across development, QA/test and operations; budget for talent and technology and identify the trouble-maker applications.

But the real information from this study is that the DevOps works, and comes out on top as a rousing success. For experienced companies, DevOps offers superior performance and scalability, fosters innovation, reduces time to put on the market for applications and services and increase competitiveness.