Evolution of IT Operations and necessity of LowOps

In the software development lifecycle, information technology (IT) operations have come a long way (SDLC). Previously, IT operations were separate from the development team, and their primary responsibilities were to deploy infrastructure for several IT environments (like development, QA, UAT, and production), maintain dependencies, and monitor/maintain the deployments as well as handle the release cycles. Keeping these Ops separate from the core development introduced several challenges to the SDLC, the main challenge being a slower deployment and release cycle. Another challenge was the inability to effectively and efficiently automate routine tasks, this led to overhead on development efforts and a consequent delay in release.

These challenges led to the discovery of DevOps practices, which aim to bridge the gap between development and operations teams to improve collaboration, communication, and efficiency. It promotes the integration of IT operations into the software development lifecycle, enabling organizations to deliver software and updates more quickly and reliably. With the adoption of agile methodologies and the shift towards continuous delivery, organizations need a way to quickly and efficiently deliver software to customers. DevOps truly revolutionized the software development paradigm and made it possible to introduce safe and efficient agile practices into SDLC. By automating the build, test, and deployment process, organizations can quickly and easily deliver new features and updates to their customers. This not only helps to improve the customer experience but also helps organizations to be more competitive in the market.

Despite its many benefits, DevOps can be a challenging approach for developers to implement. One reason is that it requires developers to have a much broader skill set than traditional software development. DevOps demands that developers not only have experience in writing code, but also in areas such as infrastructure, deployment, and operations. This can be overwhelming for inexperienced developers and can result in a steep learning curve. Even with experienced developers, the demand to learn about DevOps practices can cause too much overhead and a shift from just building software to building both the platform and the software.

However, in recent years, there has been a trend towards LowOps and NoOps in the software industry. LowOps refers to an approach that reduces the number of operations tasks required to run and maintain software systems, while NoOps refers to an approach that eliminates the need for operations.

For example, Kubernetes is a powerful orchestration system for containerized applications. It provides a lot of features that make it easy to manage the deployment, scaling, and operation of containerized applications. However, it can be difficult to set up and configure, especially for developers who are not familiar with it.

One way to make the process of deploying applications easier is to use a platform like Cycle.IO. Cycle.IO is a platform that aims to simplify the process of deploying and managing applications. It provides a simple, user-friendly interface that allows developers to deploy their applications without having to write any Kubernetes manifests or configures any cluster resources.

However, LowOps platforms aren’t restricted to only K8S-related deployments, and can directly connect with your cloud providers to deploy, maintain and scale your infrastructure and the containers within it. 

We, at Coditation, have tinkered with Cycle.IO to find its UI simple and intuitive, it allows you to deploy your infrastructure on both Bare metal and Virtual machines, and it takes just 6 easy steps to get online. If you already have your cloud providers ready and your Images and containers sorted, it takes as little as 10 minutes to get online with Cycle.

With the advent of LowOps, organizations(and their developers) can now focus on building the product and have LowOps platforms like cycle.io take care of the operational needs.

In conclusion, DevOps has had a significant impact on the software industry by enabling organizations to be more agile and responsive to the needs of the business. However, the trend towards LowOps and NoOps is changing the software industry for the better by allowing organizations to focus more on the development of their software and less on the maintenance and operations of their systems.