DEVOPSdigest

DEVOPSdigest asked DevOps experts — analysts and consultants, users and the top vendors — for their predictions on how DevOps and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2019. Part 3 covers the development process.

Start with 2019 DevOps Predictions - Part 1

Start with 2019 DevOps Predictions - Part 2

NO CODE

In the coming year, agile development will further expand the use of no-code platforms, which provide rapid development at a much lower cost than traditional code-heavy development while allowing business users to configure robust applications to directly match workflows and processes.
Christian Thun
VP of Engineering, Agiloft(link is external)

There will be a sharp increase in the number of applications developed and deployed using low- or no-code platforms. Contrasting the coding-based roles collapse into DevOps, the user experience and workflows of applications will be increasingly separated from the coders as applications are composed using high level, reusable, cross-platform assets instead of coded from scratch. This will decrease the skillset needed for the front end of applications and will increase the need for more backend focused developer roles, especially regarding performance and security. The nascent progressive web, microservices, and micro-interaction movements will also see a sharp increase in interest.
Jeffrey Martin
Director of Product Management and Operations, SmartBear(link is external)

LOW CODE

As the market moves away from the concept of the citizen developer toward complex applications that require seasoned programmers, low-code platforms will become a central component of a successful IT strategy and a must-have in any enterprise IT architecture. Transitioning away from citizen developers, in 2019, we'll see greater use of low-code design methodologies; supporting mission-critical features, high-complexity tasks, as low-code will be used to support enterprise-class business applications.
Kevin Spurway
SVP, Appian(link is external)

EVERYTHING WILL REQUIRE CODE

Code will eat everything in 2019. As we continue to see the lines blur between Dev and Ops, the skill sets demanded of each will blur as well. The ability to code is critical to effective automation, and while coding has traditionally been a skill owned by developers, in 2019 the growing use of automation in DevOps workflows will require the same coding knowledge from Ops. Everything from the way you define your Kubernetes cluster to the way you gather analytics from your users will be defined by code. Regardless of where you fit into the software development lifecycle, if you can't code you may be seriously jeopardizing your role.
Tal Weiss
CTO and Co-Founder, OverOps(link is external)

JOBS AS CODE

They call it a speed-bump for a reason – DevOps has proven to be a critical element in helping today's businesses digitally transform. But one area where DevOps teams still struggle is the Dev-to-Ops handoff into production. Why? Because it's still too manual. 2019 will be the year when adding jobs-as-code to the front end of the software delivery lifecycle will go mainstream. Taking this simple, powerful approach of coding automation instrumentation along with the business logic and infrastructure-as-code, then running it all through the CI/CD tool chain, will help DevOps teams blow by the manual speed-bump into production. Get ready to run fast with no pit stops.
Tim Eusterman
Senior Director, Solutions Marketing, BMC Software(link is external)

APPLICATION PLATFORMS

2019 is the year of the application platform. Application platforms will usher in an entirely new way for developers to consume and customize enterprise software. Application platforms deploy like a SaaS application, integrate like an on-premises-based solution and iterate at the pace of API-based platform. With application platforms, developers benefit from the low cost and scalability of the cloud but are are no longer limited like they are with SaaS which cannot be customized for specific business needs. We expect an explosion of new ideas from developers, starting in the contact center industry, who finally have the tools they need to innovate enterprise software.
Devang Sachdev
Director of Product Marketing , Twilio Flex(link is external)

STANDARDIZATION

Experience value will transition to platform value with IT leaders demanding OOTB integrations.
CIOs and architects will grow weary of the "Wild Wild West" of DevOps toolchains and begin mandating standardized integrations with proven scale in the form of available support and operations expertise. This will accelerate the consolidation of adjacent and niche solutions as medium and large businesses demand standardization and ecosystem integrations from the major players in the industry.
Ari Weil
Global VP of Product and Industry Marketing, Akamai(link is external)

NEW FRAMEWORKS

2019 will be the year to get up to speed on the concepts of GraphQL, and it's also very likely someone on your team will bring in TypeScript, which is clearly showing itself to be more than just a tool for enthusiasts. Bottom line: be prepared to learn new frameworks, and don't hold on to your current tools too tightly.
Laurie Voss
COO and Co-Founder , npm, Inc.(link is external)

JAVA DOMINATES

Java will continue to be the dominant player in enterprise application software development as organizations migrate from Java 8 to 11.
Burr Sutter
Director, Developer Experience, Red Hat(link is external)

OPEN SOURCE POPULARITY

We will see an increase in the adoption of open source technologies as organizations continue to struggle with a plethora of tools and platforms that need to work together. Tools that interoperate and “play nice” within the growing DevOps ecosystem of tools will be more important than ever.
Ravi Tharisayi
Senior Product Marketing Manager, New Relic(link is external)

The market will double down on open source technologies: 2018 has seen $53 billion in deals involving open source following the Cloudera/Hortonworks merger and acquisitions of Red Hat, GitHub and others. 2019 will see businesses double down on open source technologies — more investments and deals will get done, and open source communities will also pour more effort and energy into projects after having seen the opportunity for open source in the marketplace. To-date, open source has still functioned with a freemium model, but the coming years may see that shift as the enterprise finds value in conventional open source technologies.
Laurent Bride
CTO, Talend(link is external)

In 2019 Open Source will be on the enterprise requirements list. Enterprises have been embracing Open Source because of two key virtues that it brings: it encourages and accelerates innovation, and provides a safety hatch for escape from vendor lock-in. Open source was gaining even more enterprise credibility on Q4, 2018; IBM's acquisition of Red Hat being a shining example. Enterprises will continue to evaluate products of all kinds on features, function, support and roadmap; but open source will move from fringe to RFP, as enterprise development teams look to collaborate with developers — and to be able to take the reins if need be — for mission-critical applications. There will likely be more acquisitions as vendors strive to add open source to their competencies and to back their revenue-producing.
Giorgio Regni
CTO, Scality(link is external)

OPEN SOURCE CHALLENGES

Open Source fragmentation will lead to developer headaches. We're beginning to see an inflection point with Open Source. For example, Oracle is taking a more commercial approach to Java, which will cause fragmentation for Java developers. Additionally, some database companies have changed their licensing terms and Open Source models, which will cause issues for cloud players who were previously benefiting from the software. In 2019, developers will be challenged to determine which Open Source platform to move to that matches all their needs and works cohesively with their current technology — without threat of changing.
Couchbase CTO Ravi Mayuram.

COLLABORATION TOOLS

Better shared work processes (i.e. DevOps or DevSecOps) and low-code collaboration tools will emerge to help mixed technical and business Digital Innovation teams get more done, and the most successful teams will share their stories. Sure, we'll always have a need for technical expertise but the highest value apps may be started by non-developers who don't care a whit about how to ingest legacy data, or which cloud infrastructure or platform they are building on. The software will just work as specified for customer needs.
Jason English
Principal Analyst & CMO , Intellyx(link is external)

UX-BASED DEVELOPMENT

Product teams will increase their focus and maturity on delivering excellent user experiences. Because of this focus, there will be a rise in the market for UX design and behavior based development that will flow into the still-transforming Agile/DevOps movements.
Jeffrey Martin
Director of Product Management and Operations, SmartBear(link is external)

ACTIONABLE REPORTS

Modern monitoring in 2019 will spur the need for 360° observability tools that can perform automatic service discovery, automatically inject code-level instrumentation, render context-rich topology maps and auto-correlate anomalies, thereby connecting the dots across every layer and every tier across the cloud and container stack. To tackle the increasing complexity, DevOps teams will realize that they need descriptive and prescriptive reports that can provide actionable information as opposed to watching tons of raw metrics and data on multiple dashboards.
Arun Aravamudhan
Principal Architect, eG Innovations(link is external)

Read 2019 DevOps Predictions - Part 4, covering Agile, CI/CD and automation.