Guest Blog by : Harikrishna Kundariya, eSparkBiz Technologies In today’s fast world of digitalization, constant pressure is put upon businesses to produce quality products at the right time and in the most efficient manner. Adopting DevOps would bring together both sides: development and IT operations for improved collaboration, automation, and eventually, efficiency in software delivery. … Continue reading "DevOps Outsourcing Guide: How It Works, Challenges & Strategy"
Guest Blog by : Harikrishna Kundariya, eSparkBiz Technologies
In today’s fast world of digitalization, constant pressure is put upon businesses to produce quality products at the right time and in the most efficient manner. Adopting DevOps would bring together both sides: development and IT operations for improved collaboration, automation, and eventually, efficiency in software delivery. However, outsourcing these DevOps functions can work well for most companies, particularly those that lack resources. This DevOps outsourcing guide will define how it works, the challenges involved, and finally, the strategy for a successful outsourcing partnership.
What is DevOps Outsourcing?
DevOps outsourcing is an agreement where a part of the functions or processes related to DevOps is outsourced to other third-party service providers, who are usually DevOps companies or teams specialized in this kind of management. This is the outsourcing of DevOps by the company, which would make the companies focus mainly on their core business activity without keeping an in-house team for DevOps but attains the latest tools and technologies.
Why DevOps Outsourcing?
Outsourcing DevOps gives various advantages to a business. The main advantages are that:
Economically Efficient: House-built DevOps teams often have a high cost for recruitment and building up the staff. Outsourced arrangements allow businesses to pay only for the service that they need them to offer and avoid overhead costs altogether.
Specialized Knowledge Access: DevOps is a space that demands knowledge in various tools, technologies, and best practices. Outsourcing will make available a readymade team of experts who keep themselves updated on trends and the latest technology in the market.
Scalability and Flexibility: Outsourcing is a very easy way to upscale or downscale according to needs. Be it for some short-term or any long-term collaboration, firms can upscale resources.
Faster Time-to-Market: DevOps practices include continuous integration and continuous delivery, which enable faster cycles of development. Outsource these and it is possible to deliver software in a much quicker time frame and time-to-market.
Focus on core competencies: Organizations can concentrate on their core business competencies, such as developing products, providing customer services, or marketing, and sending the technical complexities to professionals.
How Does DevOps Outsourcing Work?
The outsourced DevOps may be a shared relationship between the business and the service provider of the third party. The engagement process includes:
1. Appraisal and Planning
Both parties have to analyze the present DevOps practices, infrastructure, and goals of the organization before they begin the outsourcing engagement. The business has to decide what it wants to outsource, like continuous integration, infrastructure management, cloud computing, etc., and then communicate its requirements to the DevOps provider clearly.
In this stage, the provider also examines the current development and operation processes of the organization to understand its pain points and bottlenecks. Once they have done that, they can create a strategy for the adoption of DevOps practices.
2. Tool and technology selection
Outsourcing DevOps refers to the choice of a set of tools and technologies selected to meet the organization’s needs. The third-party service provider will propose the relevant tools for automation, continuous integration, monitoring, version control, containerization, etc. The choice may depend upon the complexity of the project so that the third-party vendor may suggest open-source options, commercial tools, or a combination of both options.
3. Implementation and Integration
After selecting the right tools, the outsourcing team starts the implementation and integration of DevOps practices into the existing business infrastructure. This may include the implementation of the CI/CD pipeline as well as automating previously manual processes or cloud services management, thus creating smooth and continuous processes of development and deployment where the organization can release its software faster and more securely.
4. Monitoring and Continuous Improvement
DevOps is the process through which the outsourcing provider always keeps monitoring the software and the infrastructure for optimal performance post the initial implementation. This would include tracking application performance, server health, and so on with monitoring tools. The provider improves and optimizes the system based on the insights obtained through the metrics by making constant improvements.
5. Team and communication
Good communication and collaboration are the secret of any outsourcing relationship’s secret. Both business and provider should remain in touch, with regular updates with meetings and feedback loops over the DevOps outsourcing to help in addressing all problems that come up and that also ensures that the teams keep in line with the goals and timelines of the project.
Challenges of DevOps Outsourcing
While outsourcing DevOps brings several benefits, the same thing comes with a set of challenges. With outsourcing, some issues should be addressed before businesses seek the services of an outsourcing partner.
1. Quality Control and Accountability
The most critical issue with outsourcing DevOps is loss of quality control. Since the set of processes and tools is infinitely complex, it becomes too challenging to check if the outsourced team upholds the organization’s standards. A clear need for this exists, and then implementation should be done with consistent follow-through, like regular monitoring of the provider’s work, to uphold the quality.
2. Security Threats
Outsourcing DevOps means the third party gets sensitive data and systems, which raises serious security and data privacy issues. Thus, a good outsourcing partner who practices best security practices and complies with appropriate data-protection regulations, such as GDPR, HIPAA, etc., must be selected.
3. Cultural and Communication Barriers
An external team working from another time zone or region introduces cultural and communication barriers, which can influence the team’s collaboration on the project and delay timelines. Business needs to develop clear communication channels, have frequent check-ins, and ensure that both teams are on the same page concerning the project goals and timelines.
4. Loss of Control
Sometimes, the most obvious risk of outsourcing is loss of control over development. With the business now depending on an external team for most of its essential operations, it may get disoriented from the grass-roots work. As such, businesses should not only ensure open lines of communication and regular feedback, but the provider should be aligned with the organization’s vision as well.
5. Integration into existing systems
Integrating outsourced DevOps practices into the organization’s existing infrastructure is rather difficult when legacy systems are involved. Businesses have to collaborate closely with the provider to integrate them as seamlessly as possible and minimize disruption to existing workflows.
Strategies for Successful DevOps Outsourcing
Despite all such challenges, business companies should maximize DevOps outsourcing while at the same time taking full steps to minimize any difficulty involved.
1. Goals and expectations should be clearly defined
The first step of any outsourcing relationship is clear objectives. Businesses should define well what they expect to see from DevOps outsourcing or how fast the software delivery shall be, quality improvement, or cost reduction. These shall be communicated to the outsourced service provider to be matched with them.
2. Choosing the Ideal Partner
The right DevOps outsourcing partner can make or break a project. Ideally, choose a provider who has implemented DevOps solutions to other organizations and specializes in the industry where your business is present. A provider will be able to express better how they have handled technically proficient solutions that integrate DevOps practices as well as experience in similar business conditions.
3. Establish Strong Communication NetworksÂ
One effective principal key into outsourcing is communication that remains opened through an update and by calls done within regular meetings shared by various parties. And here might be the route for exploitations through using services offered by Slack and even a Microsoft Team alongside many of the project apps in conducting communications from other time zones across continents leading to widespread connectivity.
4. Security and compliance based on principles
Outsourced DevOps should not compromise security issues. All the requirements related to security should be discussed with the outsourcing provider and the user, which will be established in advance. Outsourcing providers must have the industry best practices for the protection of data so should not breach data confidentiality and may face non-compliance cases.
5. Measure performance and set metrics trackingÂ
There would also be a monitoring requirement from the outsourced DevOps team to keep the project on track. There will be clear KPIs and metrics set to gauge the success of the engagement. The metrics would often be reviewed to establish any grounds of improvement and changes will thus be implemented.Â
Conclusion
Outsourcing is a valuable option for any organization seeking to streamline its software development processes, reduce costs, and gain access to specialized expertise. As a result, this outsourced model enables organizations to hire DevOps engineers who are masters at automation, continuous integration, continuous delivery, infrastructure as code, monitoring, and other key DevOps practices. If one knows how it works, is aware of the challenges, and uses the right strategies, then businesses will successfully use DevOps outsourcing in the delivery of software faster and more efficiently. The key to success would be finding the right outsourcing partner, keeping clear communication, and keeping long-term goals and continuous improvement in mind.
Written By :Â Harikrishna KundariyaÂ
Harikrishna Kundariya, a marketer, developer, IoT, Cloud & AWS savvy, co-founder, Director of eSparkBiz Technologies. His 14+ years of experience enables him to provide digital solutions to new start-ups based on IoT and SaaS applications.
