The notion of devops means that you’re streamlining the movement of applications from the point of need to production. It matters not if you’re changing or improving applications or building new ones.

Of course, devops arose around the rise of cloud computing, and that’s no mystery. Cloud computing provides a point of central deployment using a shared consumption model. So, devops, fits well into that model considering that you’re consistently developing and deploying applications around the notion of continuous improvement.

However, what’s more interesting is not the fact that devops is a nice way to leverage the value of cloud computing; it’s the fact that devops should be systemic to all that is cloud for most, if not all, enterprises. Indeed, I’m rarely working on a cloud migration project that does not have a devops component. Either the company is building a new devops organization and processes at the same time, or it is improving existing ones. Enterprises are getting it—or have already got it.

Devops is to cloud computing as are security, governance, and managemen—meaning it’s no longer optional. It’s needed to gain the true value of cloud computing.

Of course, there are still many enterprises that are doing cloud first and devops second. That’s a huge mistake considering that you’re leaving as much as 30 percent of the value of cloud computing on the table. Fortunately, enterprises are understanding more and more than one can’t be decoupled from the other and so are biting the bullet around the extra costs associated with building a devops organization and related tools.

The downside of all this is that it makes cloud computing costlier to implement. Considering that you also need to add security and the other subcomponents that make cloud computing work, devops is often something new on the budget line.

However, the ROI is just one year in most cases, and then returns are as much as 30 percent after that. That being the case, cloud computing and devops are clearly now functionally tightly coupled.