DEVOPSdigest

In the tradition of APMdigest's annual list of APM predictions, DEVOPSdigest is hosting its first annual list of DevOps Predictions. DevOps experts — analysts and consultants, and the top vendors — offer thoughtful, insightful, often controversial and sometimes contradictory predictions on how DevOps and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2016.

The predictions cover topics ranging from the evolving roles of dev and ops; to relationships within IT and with the business side; to the changing processes; to the innovative technologies that support them all. This is a vibrant list that reflects a growing movement with almost limitless possibilities.

Some of these predictions may actually come true in 2016, while others may be just as valid but take several years to be realized. Still others may be wishful thinking. But taken collectively, this list of predictions offers an insider's look at what the DevOps experts are thinking about, planning, expecting and hoping for next year.

A strong response to the call for predictions has resulted in a long inaugural list rivaling this year's popular list on APMdigest. The DevOps predictions will be posted in 5 parts over the next 5 days, with the last installment on Monday.

Here are the 2016 DevOps Predictions:

DEVOPS BECOMES MAINSTREAM

The fundamental drivers of cloud, mobile and social will cause more companies to recognize
the cultural, performance and financial benefits of adopting DevOps best practices.
Gabe Lowy
Technology Analyst and Founder of TechTonics Advisors

The beginning of mainstream DevOps: While leaner and more agile organizations have enjoyed the benefits of DevOps and continuous delivery over the last couple years, mature enterprise recognize their value and have begun to make the cultural shift. Using well placed caution, we will see enterprises test DevOps practices – processes, automation, collaboration and tooling – across new, but less critical IT projects in 2016 before seeking broader adoption.
Krishnan Badrinarayanan
Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Riverbed

From reading the real user reviews of DevOps solutions on IT Central Station, I see a shift in who's researching and buying DevOps solutions. While previously, many reviews were written primarily by DevOps Managers and Release Managers, we are seeing a jump in the number of review of DevOps tools written by other functions in IT - architects, customer service managers, middleware experts, network engineers and others. DevOps tools are set to be in the budget for mainstream IT buyers in 2016.
Russell Rothstein
Founder and CEO, IT Central Station

Click here to read the latest Devops product reviews on IT Central Station

DevOps will come of age in 2016. Currently DevOps is like an adolescent child - exciting, determined and breaking down barriers. In 2016 it will reach the tipping point from hype to reality. This will happen as a result of both cultural change within teams, and the delivery of scalable release technology.
Chris Boorman
CMO, Automic Software

Right now, the mature DevOps shops in our customer base have come from the software and technology world and are the kind that adopt modern practices and technology quite early. We're starting to see the adoption rise across the other side of our customer base, the larger enterprise and Fortune 100, and by 2016, I expect that DevOps will become a more dominant strategy realized by adoption of practices across the board. Because of this, I also see the ways in which businesses handle incident management evolving with an emphasis on being proactive by leveraging data from tools.
Tim Armandpour
VP of Engineering, PagerDuty

GREATER DEVOPS ADOPTION BY LARGE ENTERPRISES

In 2016, more of the larger organizations will finally commit to DevOps. In the next 12 months we'll see more sophisticated tools that automate correlation of data analytics and problem resolution dependencies, including cross-silo infrastructure intelligence insights that mitigate performance risk to the deployment of shared or converged compute, storage and networking resources.
Atchison Frazer
VP of Marketing, Xangati

DevOps teams in the Global 5000 will continue to form as a small part of their overall strategy. But this will continue to gain momentum with new software and tools and QA technology available. The days of "we can't do that because it will hurt our quality or security" will begin to fade as the benefits are shown, and new QA technology is brought to bear to deal with those concerns. G5000 enterprises will begin to talk about their move, and the direct cost savings they are seeing, in more open forums and be proud of the accomplishments. While a "true" DevOps methodology might be more challenging for a large enterprise with 10,000 applications than a software company with 1 major app, they will still see major benefits even embracing some if not all of the culture.
Kevin Surace
CEO, Appvance

In 2016, the DevOps movement will start influencing traditional development teams who might not be able to fully evolve to a true DevOps process, but can and should still embrace some of the essential DevOps concepts. They’ll start, naturally, with collaboration, but also begin implementing greater end-user focus; agility; automation; measurement; and last, but not least, performance as a discipline.
Gerardo Dada
VP, Product Marketing and Strategy, SolarWinds

GREATER DEVOPS ADOPTION BY SMALL IT TEAMS

In 2015, DevOps moved beyond niche communities and early adopters and finally went mainstream due to the growing complexity of most IT environments. As 2016 approaches, we believe that there will be increased adoption and broader use of DevOps fueled by smaller IT teams undergoing a cultural shift in their approach to development strategies. DevOps allows for quicker and more agile development which increases efficiencies across the IT organization.
Aaron Kelly
VP of Product Management, Ipswitch

DEVOPS BEST PRACTICES EMERGE

Gartner's 2015 Hype Cycle for I&O Automation says DevOps is in the "Peak of Inflated Expectations." I think that's a fair assessment where, for many IT organizations, DevOps principles are being applied to one or perhaps a small handful of applications in an experimental phase. While mainstream adoption is a ways off for these companies, the pursuit of agility and fast time-to-market is real. For 2016, I predict IT organizations will look for best practices, ideally from other companies in their industry, to accelerate their DevOps journey and to minimize painful lessons learned.
Marcus MacNeill
VP, Product Management, Zenoss

DevOps is still emerging on the software development landscape and no defined standards have emerged for the practice, which has caused businesses to hesitate to fully adopt this cultural change. In 2016, we'll begin to see organizations establish their own standards and overtime, best practices will emerge and be adopted across industries.
Ashish Kuthiala
Senior Director, Strategy & Marketing, DevOps, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

3 More DevOps Predictions for 2016 from Hewlett Packard Enterprise

SERVICE ASSURANCE IS TOP OF MIND

In 2016 service assurance comprised of performance management and threat management will not only be top of mind for the IT organization, but also for business leaders and board members. Business success will grow more and more dependent on the agility and effectiveness of introducing new business services and assuring its' flawless delivery in production environments with rapid service triage from the core to the edge of the IT infrastructure and into the cloud. As businesses embark on the journey of digital transformation, getting deep insights into complex service transactions traversing physical and virtual infrastructures will be the key to competitive differentiation, reducing operating costs and keeping users and customers happy.
Ron Lifton
Senior Solutions Marketing Manager, NetScout

APM: VITAL DEVOPS TECHNOLOGY

In 2016 we will see several advancements: Further virtualization and "cloudifying" of environments along the pipeline where even developer's workstations will become more virtual; initiatives to increase unit test coverage and functional testing to enable automatic capture and monitoring of architectural metrics as well as business KPIs. Finally we will see refactoring of architectures that offer speedier build times, smaller deployment packages and enable faster feedback to engineers. APM will be an important part of helping organizations achieve success in each of these areas.
Brett Hofer
Global DevOps Practice Lead, Dynatrace

Read 2016 DevOps Predictions - Part 2