The Pros and Cons of DevOps Outsourcing: Is It Worth the Cost?

According to Forrester, as of the end of 2017, 50% of organizations were actively implementing and expanding their DevOps services. 13% of respondents have already made use of DevOps while 36% plan to adopt it in the future. And that’s not surprising. The increased productivity and performance that come with this approach bring companies more income and fewer headaches.

You may know by now what DevOps means. But to be on the same page here’s the definition by Brian Guthrie we like best: “DevOps is a set of practices that encourage continuous integration into production. Here’s what it’s not: a job title, a software tool, a team name, or magic enterprise fairy dust. No practices, no DevOps.”

That’s the catch: while many businesses boast having professional DevOps engineers on their teams, not everyone has the mindset to implement these practices the right way. Could outsourcing DevOps do the trick? And what is DevOps as a Service (DaaS). Let’s sort out the pros and cons of DevOps outsourcing.

DevOps Services for Businesses

The DevOps culture whirls around the Lean principles and Agile methodology. All three concepts complement each other and add to mutual efficiency. It stands to reason since all three of them preach the same principles:

Aiming for shorter development cycles

Increasing deployment frequency

More tenable releases

Better alignment with business goals

Reduction of waste of all sorts.

To meet these principles, DevOps Engineers have to implement DevOps practices. These practices are aimed at eliminating barriers between specialists involved at different stages of a software development lifecycle (SDLC). All-around automation and constant monitoring throughout the SDLC stages are also important elements of the philosophy behind DevOps services.

Why Distinguish DevOps as a Service?

Alongside the DevOps movement, a new concept of DevOps as a Service (DaaS) has arrived. As you can guess from the “as a service” combination, DaaS covers the transfer of the DevOps infrastructure and tools into the cloud. Outsourcing companies offering DevOps as a Service, can assess the company’s existing practices, launch cloud migration and provide the necessary tools to manage the delivery pipeline in the cloud.

DaaS collects development tools into a single cloud-hosted kit that helps teams sustain continuous delivery, continuous testing and continuous integration. That’s why DevOps as a Service brings improved scalability, automation, performance and business value.

The Real Benefits of DevOps Outsourcing

According to the State of DevOps Report, companies able to outreach DevOps services can expect the following results:

24x faster recovery from failures

3x lower change failure rate

22% less time spent on unplanned work and rework 5

0% less time remediating security issues.

Ant these are only some of the benefits. Other pros of DevOps outsourcing include:

Access to a Pool of Talents

Every company wants to hire the best employees. For tech businesses, the choice of people matters big time. But when it comes to DevOps services, expert minds are worth their weight in gold. DevOps experts are aware of their superior status. So don’t expect to find DevOps specialists easily.

DevOps outsourcing providers have fewer problems in finding the best of the best for your projects. Entire recruitment and HR departments are working hard to create the right corporate culture, ensure the appropriate facilities and develop a corresponding reputation within a company – all to attract and retain brilliant engineers.

Preserving the Strength of a DevOps Team

Even if you’ve found and hired as many DevOps Engineers as you want, it’s only half the battle. To keep them interested and result-oriented is not a piece of cake. The challenging tasks ahead might keep DevOps engineers engrossed. But to make them work without hassle and deliver on the promises, DevOps teams should always be motivated and appreciated.

Qualified DevOps engineers are top players. They’re like Lionel Messi in soccer or Clayton Kershaw in baseball. Your company should be ready to deal with them professionally. An outsourcing company provides all the facilities for engineering “stars.” It supports a strong DevOps culture so that talented developers can improve their skills and feel helpful.

Shorter Development Cycles with Improved Quality

DevOps is all about the synergy of teams. In outsourcing, DevOps services providers do the utmost to ensure synergy and effective communication. They provide valuable resources and software development best practices here and now, so customers don’t need to start at zero. Instead, they will receive everything required to put the DevOps methodology in place right away.

It saves time and efforts through shortened development frameworks and a new level of flexibility. In this way, organizations can immediately bring forth new products and services as the market evolves. On top of that, constant monitoring, continuous testing and ubiquitous automation considerably improve the quality of the production code.

The Bottom Line: It’s Always About Money

Another point in favor of DevOps outsourcing is the price of a qualified engineer hired in-house. DevOps superstars may cost twice the cost of an average offshore project. Among other factors supporting outsourcing and the quality-price ratio, this is where companies always win.

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DevOps Outsourcing Pitfalls to Consider

There are always two sides of the same coin. DevOps outsourcing has its pitfalls and it isn’t a universal remedy for all sorts of businesses. To make an informed decision, you have to take a look at these drawbacks.

DevOps Is a Culture, Are You Ready to Share It?

The software development practice can’t be built overnight by simply placing all the participants of SDLC into one room. Before rendering DevOps services, an organization should admit it’s a specific culture starting down from the top. In the case of outsourcing DevOps, a company can temporarily accept a borrowed philosophy of the outsourcing provider or let a new member out of the outsourced DevOps team into their internal developing practice. Either way, a corporate culture is about values, and values are often too fragile when handed off to a third party.

DevOps Is not the Easiest Field to Deal with

Outsourcing DevOps requires a certain level of software engineering expertise. To successfully outsource DevOps services, a company should have professionals with a thorough knowledge of continuous integration and testing tools, release automation, infrastructure configuration and management. Especially when it comes to DevOps as a Service, a business should have its own engineering excellence to cooperate and manage the DevOps team.

Outsourcing DevOps is a Team Effort

Delivered value is at the heart of all the technological efforts companies put into DevOps outsourcing. To deliver that value in the desired way, DevOps projects should be carried out by the right people at the right time. A customer and a vendor should establish a perfect symbiosis of available skills, make use of relationships between team member and stakeholders, corporate policies and other factors.

Continuous delivery works best when the team makes changes quickly, deploying new capabilities. But if the teams work like an untuned piano, the entire project is at risk. In fact, it’s not a drawback of the DevOps outsourcing model but more of a challenge to be aware of.

Genuine Partnership Requires Time

No doubt, the close rapport between customers and vendors isn’t something that can be established overnight. It requires time. The difficulty with DevOps outsourcing is doubled with the lack of good DevOps specialists on the market, those skillful people who not only are tech-savvy but interpret the spirit of DevOps the right way.

To succeed with DevOps outsourcing, arm yourself with patience and resources to search, communicate and establish relations with a contractor. Otherwise, the business won’t get the expected results.

Conclusion

DevOps is a virtue for businesses. From business validation through software development to testing and support, the DevOps team works in close coordination to optimize the productivity and reliability of a product. There are different opinions surrounding the outsourcing of such a When an organization outsources DevOps, its spirit gives more competitive advantages by improving internal processes. Besides that, DevOps continuous services help tech businesses to respond to changing customer needs and competitive pressure faster than ever.

DevOps services give companies a fertile ground to deliver high-quality custom software quickly. DevOps simplifies the co-existence of various corporate departments, changing the corporate culture but increasing productivity. On the customer’s side, they receive sophisticated and reliable software faster due to a remarkable synergy and the wide-ranging automation DevOps outsourcing fosters. However, as with every trending concept, businesses often have a contradictory impression of what DevOps outsourcing embodies in a software engineering culture. Outsourcing DevOps has its pros and cons. And now that we’ve shared some of them with you, you can finally make the right decision for your company.

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