Switzerland, Spain and France are beating UK at DevOps – survey

UK companies are failing to adopt key requisites for DevOps success, according to a new survey.

The study says the Brits' shortcomings were seen in three main areas, namely business-led approaches to development, skilled and collaborative IT resources, and key control risks.

According to Assembling the DevOps Jigsaw, a survey conducted by IT industry analyst firm Freeform Dynamics and sponsored by systems management firm CA Technologies, over two-thirds (67 per cent) of UK organisations claim they have broadly implemented DevOps, or have at least done so in selected areas of the business.

However, only 11 per cent of UK organisations are in an advanced stage of deployment, defined as firms that have implemented DevOps across at least six different business areas.

Although DevOps (which promotes collaboration between software developers and other IT teams as well as automating software delivery and infrastructure changes) is not a new concept, with Gartner stating that it will become a mainstream strategy in 2016, UK organisations are seemingly struggling to get it right.

The UK lags behind Switzerland (23 per cent), Spain (13 per cent), and France (12 per cent), but is ahead of Germany (10 per cent) in the number of firms practising advanced DevOps benchmark, according to global figures from the same CA-funded study.

While 84 per cent of UK organisations agree it is important to have IT and business alignment in relation for DevOps, only 36 per cent already have this goal in place. There’s a similar shortfall in skills (87 per cent think skills are important, compared with 24 per cent who claim to have the appropriately-trained workers).

And although the vast majority of UK organisations agree it is important to deal with the security and compliance challenges surrounding the DevOps methodology, only 20 per cent have rolled out technologies to accomplish this objective.

Part of the reason for the capability gap identified in the survey may be explained by the lack of cultural harmony in IT. Some 68 per cent of UK organisations agree it is important to break down cultural barriers between Dev and Ops teams, but only 38 per cent have fully dealt with cultural transformation.

Getting past traditional lines of demarcation, ingrained mind-sets and long-established turf wars takes time and patience, according to CA.

“This study reveals that UK organisations are missing out on the opportunities heralded by the application economy, because they are failing to adopt a fluid and experimental approach to product and service development,” said Ritu Mahandru, veep, solution sales at CA Technologies.

“Digital interaction with customers, partners and suppliers increasingly takes place through applications, apps and online services. To innovate new customer experiences, be more agile and grow revenues, UK organisations require a much more rapid and continuous delivery of value to create competitive advantage, while simultaneously allowing IT to become more responsive and efficient,” she added.

The survey also found that two-thirds (66 per cent) of UK organisations are using containerisation (touted as improving application portability, thereby increasing productivity among development and operations staff by allowing teams to work more collaboratively) as part of their DevOps initiative.

More than 1,400 senior IT and business executives worldwide were quizzed as part of the research. ®