Originally Published in Feb 2015
In part I I tackled DevOps at a high level.
Everyone in the Development and Operations organizations are unified by the goal to deliver the best product possible to their customers.
This is achieved by extending the Agile methodology (Dev) and it's related many small changes into the folks that support the systems that host the applications (Ops).
The core requirements are
greater intimacy
effective communication,
removal of Silo's driving more teamwork,
empowerment of everyone to make decisions to improve the product.
Just enough process
Ultimate goal of automating everything that can be automated
There was an interesting Keynote given by Cameron Haight at the last 2012 Gartner Data Center Conference about DevOps.
Listening to his talk, there was definitely a comparison between "cloud" providers, like Amazon / Rackspace and Internal IT operations, HOWEVER nothing that really spoke to a Managed Hosting Provider (MHP) that deals in more dedicated hosting or private clouds.
Over the next few postings, I'll explore this subject partly using his structure of People, Process & Technology as it provides a solid foundation for the discussion and some other aspects like sales impacts.
Before I get stuck in, let me provide some context of a typical Managed Hosting Engagement and the people / roles in play. These observations are based on 15 years of working with customers at several different providers.
Typically the service provider is sought for and chosen by the Customers IT Operations organization - not their developers. Consequently the Customer is the IT organization and the Customer's Customer is the development organization and the internal business.
Typically there is little information provided during the sales process regarding development methodologies and the processes of the customers' (Ops) internal customer (Dev). This specifically includes numbers & types of changes.
Typically the person making the purchase decision is not the person that will be interacting with the Managed Hosting Provider (MHP) on a daily basis.
Typically there is little to no interaction or connection of the customers internal Change Management systems to the MHP (No ticket integration or limited project management integration).
Sometimes the customer is providing hosting to multiple internal customers with multiple international 3rd party development organizations.
There have been no customers in my experience that have even used the words "DevOps" in any interaction
Observation 1 - not all customers are cut out for a "DevOps" type relationship with their own Internal IT - let alone a MHP.
Part III - We'll start exploring the details...starting with the sales process.
Photo by Mark Fletcher-Brown on Unsplash