The Rise of DevOps: Keeping an Eye on Consumption

DevOps stands for software engineering aiming to unify software development (Dev) and software operation (Ops). With cloud computing allowing developers more control over components, and cloud tools and services automating the process of building, managing and provisioning through code, it's easy to see cloud's attraction. However, the rate of your consumption can run away with you if you don't keep an eye on it...

With its focus on encouraging development and operations teams to work together seamlessly through better communication, integration and automation, DevOps has grown in popularity in the last couple of years. According to one set of statistics , 67% of SMEs and 47% of Enterprises have adopted DevOps as an approach.

The rise of DevOps has also seen more development activity move to the cloud. Cloud not only offers companies the benefit of per-use models – the overall cost of development, testing, deployment and operations on the cloud is substantially lower. But perhaps just as importantly, cloud allows for greater speed-to-delivery, as well as a centralized, standardized environment for development.

However, as test and development environments are spun up in the public cloud, organizations can quickly lose control of their cloud usage and find themselves paying for services that are no longer needed. Running multiple development teams in parallel can compound such issues. As a result, cloud costs can quickly spiral out of control.

In order to avoid cloud sprawl, IT departments need to ensure they can maintain a holistic, continuous view of cloud usage. Today’s cloud monitoring solutions can provide visibility across multiple cloud vendors to provide deep, real-time visibility into usage levels. As well as estimating costs, these platforms should also be able to deliver real-time alerts when certain parameters have been met.

This visibility will allow IT teams to closely analyze cloud consumption and optimize their usage accordingly. More generally, it can also allow them to take a periodic stance on whether their development, testing and deployment efforts are taking place on the best-priced cloud infrastructure.

For organizations to realize the full benefits of cloud as a development environment, they need to closely monitor teams’ activities to ensure that they get the best out of their investment. An effective cloud monitoring tool will offer a transparent breakdown of consumption, with all data visible on a single dashboard.

Managed Cloud solutions offer detailed insights into Azure consumption, ensuring DevOps teams are able to track their resources used and stay within the parameters of their budget – leaving those who need to, able to make adjustments accordingly and get on with work without worry.