Is transitioning from startup to enterprise devops giving you chills?
Let's face it: DevOps is difficult to deploy. However, I feel that implementing enterprise devops is considerably more difficult. I've seen a lot of cases where startups are trying to figure out "how a specialised devops team should function" in a corporate setting. The majority of them are unsure about the dedicated DevOps team's aims and how to achieve them. I've outlined a handful of the blunders companies made during their transitioning from DevOps startups to enterprises based on my observations.
Communication and Collaboration
Commonly referred to as DevOps silos, it's the most major roadblock to overcome while moving from startup to enterprise devops. Traditionally, the development and operations teams worked in silos. However, as we all know, devops isn't just a combination of the development and operations teams; it should encompass the entire process.
Businesses should develop a DevOps culture that reduces operational friction between teams to combat this. For example, for many years, Etsy, an American eCommerce startup, grappled with the same problem. They decided in 2009 that their deployment rate needed to be faster, thus they established a DevOps culture. Their operation friction decreased dramatically after that, and they were able to deploy 60 times each day.
Tech Stack Incompatibility
Startups attempting to transition to enterprise devops are frequently confronted with technological incompatibilities. In a startup situation, people are more likely to employ the first accessible resource to complete the task. At that point in time, scalability was the furthest thing from their minds. As they increase in size, they understand that transitioning to modern architecture is a better option. However, this would demand a complete overhaul of the existing technologies.
While transitioning from a traditional technical stack, I believe companies should migrate to a microservices architecture. The Microservices strategy will assist developers in building critical features independently.
When I read an article on Netflix adopting DevOps, I realized that everyone is certain to make this mistake at some point. The article discusses Netflix's early days, including how they transitioned from a monolithic architecture to a network of 700+ microservices for faster deployments. They've grown into a multibillion-dollar corporation with 222 million customers.
Dealing with security concerns
When you make the decision to transition to enterprise devops, one of your top objectives should be security. Why you may ask? It's because devops works with applications, containers, and microservices on a daily basis, and they all share account credentials, tokens, ssh keys, and other sensitive information. The stacks are quite high without sufficient security measures.
You can assure optimal security by adopting preventative actions. You could begin with - At the database level, maintaining regular and automated scanning is essential.
- Scanning all dependencies and container images in a deep recursive manner
- Providing all teams with uniform security and compliance standards
- Forming governance teams to keep an eye on regulations and policies
Conclusion
Bottom line: transitioning from startup to enterprise devops isn't as difficult as it appears. Etsy, Netflix, FIH, Nordstrom, and other well-known companies have all used enterprise devops at some time in their development process. It's all about the procedures that must be followed to ensure that enterprise devops are implemented successfully.