The second CloudBolt Industry Insights report, released by the CloudBolt Software, reveals the Truth About DevOps in the Hybrid Cloud Journey. The report is based on a global survey of 200 IT and DevOps leaders at companies employing at least 1,000 people. Of the respondents, 75% held titles of Vice President and above. The survey was conducted on the Pulse research platform, a Gartner-owned research subsidiary, and follows the company’s inaugural report called The Truth About Hybrid Cloud and Digital Transformation.
The report reveals that while key DevOps processes and tools, such as continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) and infrastructure-as-code (IaC) have made significant strides in broad adoption, opportunities for marked improvement still exist. There are notable gaps in infrastructure provisioning speed, testing, and overall reliability that are hindering efforts to advance CI/CD. For IaC, enabling non-technical teams to reap its benefits, along with better governance and visibility, are key ways of creating competitive advantage for users.
Some of the key insights that enterprises shared on their CI/CD journey include:
Lack of reliability is a perceived risk in CI/CD infrastructures – For CI/CD to work efficiently, developers need to deploy infrastructure “pipelines” and reliably test their apps as they are developed. Despite 85% of respondents saying they continuously test their infrastructure, only 11% consider that infrastructure reliable.
Manual processes and inconsistency plague pipelines – While the goal of CI/CD is to deploy applications rapidly and continuously, survey results showed that only 15% deploy even once per day. The key culprits? 63% say there are too many manual processes involved when setting up pipeline infrastructure, and 55% have difficulty creating consistent CI/CD pipeline environments.
Need to put the “continuous” back in CI/CD – To advance the CI/CD vision, not only do enterprises want faster access to infrastructure for their pipelines (70%), but they also want the ability to continuously detect pipeline infrastructure issues (e.g., unexpected changes to compute, storage, configurations, passwords, etc.) before they happen (62%), thereby improving reliability.
Along with CI/CD, DevOps teams are utilizing tools like IaC to gain speed and agility. Terraform has widespread adoption, with 88% saying they are either already using it or considering using it. When asked how to complement existing IaC investments for hybrid cloud, enterprises cited the following:
Self-service and governance are key complements for IaC – 62% of respondents recommended all three of the following as ways to complement their existing Terraform experience:
(a) allow for non-Terraform experts to deploy infrastructure using Terraform
(b) ensure only Terraform plans with “IT guardrails” are executed
(c) add the ability to optimize visibility and cost control in infrastructure deployed by Terraform
IaC + cloud management is a powerful combination – To meet the needs above, 74% of enterprises say they most commonly use a cloud management platform (CMP) in conjunction with Terraform to better manage their hybrid cloud environments end to end.
“The CloudBolt Industry Insights series was designed to examine specific areas of interest and capabilities related to the hybrid cloud journey. This particular study shines a light on the growing state of DevOps,” said Jeff Kukowski, chief executive officer of CloudBolt Software. “CI/CD, IaC, and Terraform all have tremendous potential to empower developers and IT to optimize application development and deployment and stay competitive in the new cloud order. Our latest research piece reveals what is needed to accelerate improvement and adoption in very meaningful ways.”
To learn more about how best-in-class companies can empower DevOps with optimal CI/CD and unleash the full potential of IaC with ways to complement Terraform investments, read the full report, The Truth About DevOps in the Hybrid Cloud Journey, here: https://resources.cloudbolt.io/get-the-most-from-your-ci-cd-terraform-practices/the-truth-about-devops-in-the-hybrid-cloud-journey.
