I asked John Skovron, Senior Director of Engineering at TIBCO, five thought-provoking, high-level questions about how DevOps and Platform as a Service (PaaS) can benefit 21st-century enterprises right now and in the long term.
Steve Leung – What are some of the most common challenges for Development & Operations teams today?
John Skovron – The common challenge is definitely the accelerating pace of software development and deployment. Agile methods have made it possible to design and implement better software much faster. With an “as-a-service” approach, whether for private or public consumption, delivery of new features and versions can accelerate from once-a-quarter to once-a-week, once-a-day, and even multiple deployments a day, utilizing A/B testing or other rapid validation techniques.
Steve Leung – Who should be driving the changes needed, business or IT? What is the role of the CIO in this transformation?
John Skovron – IT should drive the changes – first of all, by aligning IT as closely as possible with the business. And certainly, the CIO should be leading the charge – any CIO who is satisfied with a status quo of sludgy, slow deployments should be brushing up his resume, because he’s going to be looking for a new job soon.
Steve Leung – What would you say are some indicators that an organization is ready to take on a DevOps project?
John Skovron – First and foremost, recognition that manual methods are no longer cutting it – although the mere fact of using manual methods (spreadsheets, word processing documents) to track deployments means you’re in danger and need to change. Usually, organizations that are ready for full-blown DevOps are already trying to script on top of virtual machines.
Steve Leung – What are common misconceptions about DevOps and PaaS?
John Skovron – Some operations teams view DevOps or PaaS as a threat. DevOps and PaaS are not the threat – the threat is the drive from the business for faster and more reliable software deployments. DevOps is the threat resolution, the solution.
Steve Leung – What is the role of Platform as a Service (PaaS) in the context of DevOps?
John Skovron – Platform as a Service is a critical component of DevOps. DevOps needs a predictable, reliable, programmable platform to deploy onto.
To learn more, you can check out our On-Demand content featuring the Google+ Hangout titled, “Private PaaS: Accelerating Continuous Delivery for DevOps.”
For more on cloud and systems integration, watch this webinar with Forrester VP and Principal Analyst John Rymer.
