November 19, 2024 ⏱️ 8 min
By Nicolas C. (RnD – DevOps Group)
DevOps-as-a-Service (DaaS) offers a practical solution for adopting DevOps by providing managed tools, infrastructure, and expert support.
However, selecting the right DaaS model—from fully managed to toolchain-only—requires understanding each option’s impact on scalability, expertise needs, and control over DevOps decisions.
Scope and Key Concepts
DevOps combines development and IT operations to enhance collaboration and accelerate software delivery.
DaaS, in various configurations (fully managed, partially managed, and toolchain-only), helps businesses adopt DevOps with flexibility, scalability, and standardized practices.
Business owners must consider their scalability needs, internal DevOps expertise, and/or required control when choosing a DaaS model.
What is DevOps and DaaS
DevOps is a methodology that combines software development (Dev) with IT operations (Ops), through a set of procedures, tools & mindset changes. Its purpose is to accelerate time to market, reduce duration of software development lifecycle and consistently produce high-quality software. By breaking down the conventional wall between development and operations, DevOps is promoting a shared product responsibility and collaborative culture.
DevOps as a Service (DaaS) is a delivery model that provides organizations with the tools, practices and infrastructure required to implement and manage DevOps processes without the complexity of setting up/manage manually. By using DaaS, companies can focus on their core capabilities by delegating the implementation and management of DevOps to a third-party service provider.
Challenges when adopting DevOps and what DaaS promises
Adopting DevOps is a transformative process, but it’s not without its hurdles. DevOps-as-a-Service (DaaS) offers a streamlined path through these common challenges by integrating expert support, standardized practices, and scalable and custom solutions for each organization’s needs.
Let’s look at how DaaS provides answers to some of the most persistent DevOps adoption challenges.
One of the hardest to overcome (if not the hardest) challenge is the cultural resistance to change. Shifting to a DevOps culture means embracing collaboration over siloed work – a change that can meet significant resistance. Many teams are accustomed to traditional roles, and may feel uneasy about moving to a more integrated, cross-functional approach.
DaaS providers bring in experienced trainers and assist in fostering a DevOps mindset by introducing practices in a way that feels natural and manageable. With this approach, the transformation becomes gradual, easing resistance and building confidence in a process that promises a lot of benefits.
The previous was a mindset challenge whether this one is more on the technical side: streamlining the toolchain integration. Often times, choosing the right tools to handle the CI/CD, continuous testing or monitoring is not an easy task. This situation becomes even more challenging when dealing with legacy systems.
DaaS providers bring in pre-configured toolchains that aims to streamline and reduce compatibility issues. In this way, the burden of configuring and maintaining an integrated toolchain is lifted, making DevOps setup smoother so teams can focus on delivering value to customers.
To emphasize on the next challenge, we imagine a company that is already making progresses in adopting a DevOps approach to their product. There is an on-going investment from stakeholders, teams are making progresses, confidence they are on a good track is building up, but how they can measure/guide the progresses consistently? Assessing the ROI of DevOps can be challenging without defined metrics.
DaaS providers address this directly by including monitoring and reporting features that track key performance indicators (KPIs) like deployment frequency, lead time, and mean time to recovery (MTTR). This transparent data allows for tangible progress for both stakeholders along with the product team. As there is no standard recipe into what is best for each product, these KPIs are also driving the fine-tuning process towards those improvements that make the most sense (and business value).
Though there are other challenges when adopting DevOps, these are ones that are harder to address and where most DevOps initiatives either lose traction or stop completely.
In the next section, we will go through some of the benefits and challenges of the DaaS solution as they provide a good understanding before deciding whether to go for an in-house adoption of DevOps or choose a DaaS model.
Benefits and challenges of DaaS
From a DevOps engineer’s perspective, DevOps-as-a-Service (DaaS) is a model that offers on-demand DevOps capabilities without requiring organizations to build everything in-house. However, while DaaS brings benefits, it also comes with challenges that can impact how well it integrates into an organization’s existing workflows and infrastructure.
One of the strongest arguments for DaaS is the immediate access to DevOps expertise and resources. Hiring DevOps professionals or training them internally can take months and will incur upfront costs. Nevertheless, bridging a knowledge gap when a member will leave the DevOps team will also be challenging.
Benefits
When going towards a DaaS approach, these engineers are already familiar with toolchains and best practices, ensuring the DevOps setup is robust from day one.
For DevOps to be a success, assessing and planning the entire adoption is of outmost importance. To give an example, it will be a waste of time (and money) to choose a continuous testing tool (having people trained, acquiring licenses, etc.) while the tool does not have capabilities to automatically generate quality reports (that will be further used in the CI/CD pipelines).
The DaaS model can be particularly advantageous for companies lacking in-house expertise or facing a skill gap, as DaaS teams can quickly implement CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code (IaC), automate testing processes or implement continuous monitoring.
What DaaS also excels at is toolchain standardization and management. We covered this challenge in the previous section but is still worth mentioning it. Many DevOps initiatives spend significant effort (and time) in choosing the right tools (or those with the less integration friction). Starting from continuous integration to deployment/delivery, then looking at how to provide constant feedback (continuous monitoring), often times, this is a bumpy road.
Rather than spending time configuring and integrating various tools (e.g., Jenkins for CI/CD, Prometheus for monitoring, Terraform for IaC), DaaS providers often deliver pre-configured toolchains that fit specific needs, infrastructure and technology stack. These standardized setups will streamline operations, enabling teams to focus on deployment and monitoring rather than tool maintenance.
Moving further, another key benefit is scalability. Scaling an infrastructure internally requires a lot of coordination across teams and a deep understanding of application’s (potential) demand patterns. For example, sudden demand spikes – whether due to new feature rollouts, user growth, or unexpected surges – can lead to significant bottlenecks. Managing these peaks is a balancing act and an ongoing process.
DaaS model is typically a cloud-native service that is inherently scalable. This means that scaling up or down happens almost automatically (preferably to be done based on real-time monitoring and triggers set within the infrastructure). This ability to adjust resources based on actual load, without manual intervention, is a huge advantage. In situations where traffic suddenly spikes, a DaaS service can provide auto-scaling capability which means you are far less likely to experience downtime or lag.
Challenges
Despite these benefits, DaaS isn’t without its challenges. For one, there’s the issue of cultural alignment. As mentioned in the section above, DevOps is as much about collaboration and shared responsibility as it is about tools and automation.
Relying heavily on an external DaaS provider can sometimes prevent a company’s internal teams from fully embracing DevOps culture, potentially creating dependency and stalling long-term adoption.
Additionally, standardization across teams can be a double-edged sword. While it ensures consistency, it might also limit flexibility, which is often a badge of effective DevOps.
Some teams may find the standardized processes restrictive, especially if they have unique needs that fall outside the DaaS provider’s framework.
In conclusion, DaaS offers a foundation for DevOps, especially for organizations targeting rapid setup and scalability. However, the success depends on how well it aligns with internal goals and/or existing infrastructure, as well as the organization’s commitment to building a sustainable DevOps culture (which, most of the times, maintaining company’s commitment is the most challenging aspect of the DevOps adoption).
Different Flavors of DevOps-as-a-Service (DaaS)
DevOps-as-a-Service (DaaS) is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Providers offer DaaS in various “flavors,” each tailored to different types of businesses and/or verticals, from startups to enterprise-level companies. When considering DaaS, it’s essential to understand the different offerings and match them to your specific needs and constraints. Here’s a breakdown of some common DaaS models and what to consider for each.
Fully Managed DevOps
Fully managed DaaS takes care of everything – toolchain setup, infrastructure management, CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, and even security (DevSecOps). Providers deploy and maintain all necessary components and manage the environment end-to-end.
Pro: This option is ideal for companies with limited DevOps expertise or time constraints. It’s a hands-off solution, freeing teams to focus on core development rather than the technical intricacies of DevOps.
Considerations: While convenient, fully managed DaaS can reduce transparency and flexibility. You might feel somewhat disconnected from the process, as critical DevOps decisions will be handled by the provider.
Partially Managed DevOps
In this offering, the provider handles infrastructure setup and core DevOps tooling, but internal teams remain responsible for some aspects, like specific CI/CD configurations or custom monitoring. This allows for flexibility where businesses retain partial control over DevOps practices.
Pro: This approach offers a balance of expertise and control, making it suitable for organizations with existing DevOps knowledge or those that want to remain actively involved.
Considerations: Although partially managed solutions offer control, they require some in-house DevOps skills. Companies with limited resources may find this setup challenging since internal teams will still need to manage and understand specific components of the pipeline.
Toolchain-as-a-Service
Some providers offer a “toolchain-only” model, where they supply and integrate a suite of DevOps tools but leave the management and operations to internal teams. This setup usually includes popular tools for CI/CD, monitoring, logging, and IaC (e.g., Jenkins, Terraform, Prometheus).
Pro: Toolchain-as-a-Service is highly customizable, and you get access to best-in-class tools without managing licensing or integration. For organizations with existing DevOps teams, this approach gives flexibility while ensuring that everything is set up optimally.
Considerations: The responsibility for ongoing management and troubleshooting rests solely on internal teams. Businesses considering this model need a strong in-house DevOps foundation.
Factors to consider as a business owner
There are some key factors that can (and should) be considered as a business owner. These factors should provide a good direction over one of the DaaS flavors mentioned above.
- Scalability Needs: When expecting rapid growth or seasonal traffic spikes, a fully managed or partially managed DaaS model might be the best option, as these generally offer built-in scalability.
- In-House Expertise: Assess the DevOps skill level within your organization. Fully managed models are optimal for businesses with limited DevOps knowledge, while toolchain-only and partially managed setups work well for teams with in-house expertise.
- Control and Customization: Assess how much control you need over your DevOps processes. Fully managed services are less customizable, whereas toolchain-only solutions give you full autonomy but require internal management.
Final words
While DaaS can streamline DevOps implementation and scaling, success depends on aligning the right model with your team’s expertise and operational goals. With good understanding of the organization’s needs, DaaS can be a powerful tool to accelerate development, improve collaboration, and foster an Agile mindset.
Îndemnul nostru
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