Latest from Lori
The Curious Connection Between Cloud Repatriation and SRE Ops
I have a fondness for philosophy. I’m about three classes short of a degree, and every few years I tell myself one day I’ll finish it. Thus, I am very familiar with what is known in statistics—and logic—as a post hoc fallacy, from which we get the saying “correlation is not causation.” This is the […]
Sep 13, 2022 · 3 minAll articles by Lori MacVittie
Showing 1–24The Definition of Faster in the Age of App Capital
Businesses want speed. One of the impacts of digital transformation—and the associated pressure to succeed in an app economy—is the desire to move at speed. Nearly half (48%) of organizations are driven by digital transformation to deploy faster according to our State of Application Services 2019. But it’s not all about deployment. It’s also about […]
Sharding for Scale: Architecture Matters
In the days of monolithic applications, scale was simple. As every instance of the app was the same, it really didn’t matter which one processed a request, as long as it was processed. On the back end, a single, ginormous data store held everything. This model ran into serious issues as apps migrated to the […]
Automation: Critical Missing Pieces in the CD Puzzle
As enterprises accelerate the frequency with which they develop and release new code into production to meet the ever-mounting demands of their consumers, there’s growing pressure on networking and security operations teams to keep pace with their DevOps counterparts. And it’s not hard to see why. According to Forrester, nearly four out of five business leaders […]
How DevOps Can Help Improve Security
Automation and standardization along with development-inspired reviews can address the three top risks to IT security. The term “DevOps” these days tends to evoke images of automation and push-button application deployments whenever app dev wants. It’s anarchy, it’s chaos, and it’s a frightening notion to those for whom stability and security of the core business […]
Infrastructure as Code is SDN for Ops
As we continue to recognize the importance of DevOps—particularly its automation and orchestration aspects—to achieve the agility necessary for continuous deployment of apps, the question of how the term “Infrastructure as Code” (IaC) applies to traditionally network-bound systems and services is bound to crop up more frequently. After all, in addition to core IP-based networking characteristics […]
In DevOps, Standardize to Minimize Architectural Debt
I recently reading a great Q&A with the Etsy CTO John Allspaw over on The New Stack, which contained some nuggets of good advice that increasingly are important as we continue the journey toward DevOps adoption. Of particular note were statements on the introduction of “new” things to solve problems. In a nutshell, Allspaw reinforced […]
In DevOps, Business and Operations Metrics Both Matter
Proponents of adopting a complete DevOps approach to application delivery and deployment often note that DevOps includes a change in culture. And not just a change in lateral change in culture—improvements in the way teams across (and within) silos communicate and collaborate—but also horizontal change that permeates every aspect of the organization, from the top down. […]
Survey says network agility is still immature
At least that’s the word from SDx Central’s Cloud Management, Orchestration and DevOps 2015 Report in which 76% of respondents said the network was the most immature component in the cloud management stack. Now to be fair, the network is one of the last components (I’m looking at you, security) to get on board the “automate […]
Imperative or Declarative? The question of DevOps in the network.
A significant amount of bandwidth is spent discussing automation and praising the value of APIs within the broader DevOps umbrella. These concepts are particularly important in the context of CI/CD and the evolution of application architectures toward decoupled, service-oriented systems. Automation is used for build and test, to drive the workflow that moves an app […]
API Discovery and Search with APIs.JSON
If that sounds vaguely like UDDI (which dealt with discovery and search of WSDL then you’re on the right track. Glue is this week, and preceding the conference was the 2015 API Strategy and Practice Tech Un-Workshops. One of the lightning talks (and they were lightning fast, let me tell you) was all about APIs.JSON […]
Enterprise DevOps: Standardize for Security
Etsy is a shining example of the success that can be achieved with continuous delivery (CD). By 2014 Etsy had doubled its deployment rate, deploying more than 50 times a day. Today the site deploys API changes in 18 seconds and launches a new website every 150 seconds. That’s speed, to be sure. Speed that […]
What IT expects from SDN is DevOps
There was much excitement in the air when the announcement that Docker had acquired SocketPlane. Not the least of which was emanating from my corner of the world, where DevOps for network (the whole network) is something you’ve noticed I pretty much live and breathe. The announcement was couched as an SDN (Software-Defined Networking) play […]
The right answer was “process”
The question is “why is there no one-size-fits-all automation and orchestration solution”? Automation, a component critical for continuous deployment particularly as it extends beyond app operations and into the broader environment to encompass network and security operations, too, continues to be a custom build kind of thing. There’s no single automation tool, framework or pattern […]
How Deploy Frequency Impacts Infrastructure Stability
I recently took some time out from reading the Internet to read a very specific piece of research I found on the Internet from IDC – its “DevOps and the Cost of Downtime” to be exact. Sponsored by AppDynamics, this fascinating read included a variety of statistics that are helpful in understanding the impact of […]
Measure Twice. Automate Once.
“Shipping” code may start with the completion of development but it doesn’t end until after the operational delivery process ends. Just like any fulfillment process, shipping is actually just the kick off of an often arduous journey that ultimately delivers the app to the end user. Ship It Back in the old days (when they […]
DevOps needs infrastructure multi-tenancy
DevOps will, under whatever moniker you want to give it – NetOps, DevOps for Networks, operationalization – continue to make inroads into the network infrastructure because ultimately it’s part of the application deployment lifecycle. While DevOps folks call it “application delivery” the reality is that an application is not ready to deliver to a user […]
Awkward questions for those getting started with automation
This blog asking awkward questions for folks jumping on the microservices bandwagon was enlightening from the perspective that many of the same questions are applicable to operations as they begin to tackle operationalizing all the things in an application lifecycle. For example: “What is your deployable unit?” Great question, isn’t it? What is your deployable […]
You Might Already be Doing DevOps in the Software-Defined Data Center
I was out reading the Internet and came across a report from EMA (Enterprise Management Associates) regarding the state of the Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) in 2014. After perusing the data and highlights, I was surprised (and yet should not have been) to find so much DevOps-related content and concepts within. Neither should I have […]
Infrastructure Automation and API Taxes
That automation is one of the critical components of DevOps is apparent in numerous surveys and studies that focus on the benefits organizations have realized from implementing the approach across operational groups. Automation itself starts with (or should start with) a comprehensive API. That means infrastructure – network and application focused – needs to expose […]
SDN has a lot to offer to DevOps
When discussing DevOps it’s natural to focus the attention on the one operations team that focuses on application infrastructure. But when you start digging in to DevOps and its applicability to all four operations groups you’ll find that technological shifts in the network – like software-defined networks (SDN) – are just as important to the overall […]
Mobility Means Enterprises Need to Get Lean with DevOps
When people say “mobile” most folks think “devices.” Phones. Tablets. Phablets. Smart things. Wearables. But what we really ought to be talking about in most cases is apps. A McKinsey & Company survey noted, “When we recently surveyed 250 CIOs on their mobility strategies, 56 percent reported strong demand from employees to support a wide […]
The Dark Side of Infrastructure as Code
We spend a lot of time extolling the virtues of infrastructure as code. All of it is true. Treating infrastructure as code can add great value in terms of its ability to promote consistent, predictable and repeatable results during the application deployment process. One of the ways in which infrastructure is treated as code is […]
Right-Picking the First Project to Go DevOps On
One of the hardest things to do when starting a new initiative is picking the right project to work on. Should I start with App A? App B? Does it really matter as long as I get started on this DevOps thing and prove its value to management? Yes, actually, it might. If you think about […]