Service-Centric Mapping for Agile Software Deployments
March 12, 2014

Tom Molfetto
SericeNow

Share this

If you've spent any time at all on industry websites, you've probably seen a couple of statistics that support of service-centric mapping: 80% of unplanned business service downtime is due to change (and therefore a failure in IT change control), and that more than 50% of unplanned downtime is the result of human error. It's a simple fact, and there's no way of getting around it. And in today's landscape, there can be more impactful issues than downtime on the business, such as security vulnerabilities, especially where personal information or sensitive data is at stake.

This fact becomes especially important to consider in organizations and amongst teams that operate in an agile development environment, where fast and regular iterations of the core product – which is that which serves to distinguish the company in the marketplace and is imperative along the pathway to market leadership – are being released to introduce new features or otherwise improve performance.

In this type of environment, where the development team is generally rolling out new builds on a monthly basis, and perhaps even more regularly to address minor issues, problems often arise in the gap that exists between the development and operations teams. Fast and short iterations of the core service require rapid and sometimes automated deployment procedures from IT teams, who are being pressed to ensure that the production environment is stable, functional and performing optimally. And as development continues to push new builds towards production, IT is oftentimes introducing new components into the infrastructure to support various aspects of the core product.

DevOps is a software development method that stresses communication, collaboration and integration between software developers and information technology (IT) professionals that aims to help an organization rapidly produce software products and services. It is a method that effectively combines and accounts for: product development, technology operations, and quality assurance. In short, DevOps is a method that seeks to bridge the gap between development and operations teams in a way that allows for greater efficiency for the operation, and a better experience for the end-user of the core service.

In order to promote DevOps harmony, it is important that the operations team responsible for managing the production environment begins to manage from the perspective of the business service(s) being powered by the IT infrastructure as opposed to managing the components of the IT infrastructure without a sense of context for the service(s) that it underlies.

With the advent of virtualization, organizations that rely on agile development to stay ahead of the competition run the risk of a fragmented and disorganized infrastructure with VMs spread out all over the place. It can be difficult to keep track of the physical locations of each VM, many of which are powering mission-critical pieces of the core product. In this sort of environment, having an up-to-date, service-centric map that makes sense out of the increasingly complex IT infrastructure powering many of today's most powerful applications is critical.

In a landscape where a single business service may have dozens of distinct virtualized IT components, it is critical that the traditional approach taken by IT organizations of managing disparate technology silos shifts towards managing the business services that are running in the data center. Otherwise IT is not supporting the business in an optimal manner.

Tom Molfetto is Marketing Director for Neebula.

Share this

The Latest

December 07, 2023

Part 4 covers OpenTelemetry: Next year, we're going to see more embrace of OpenTelemetry across the entire industry — opening up the future of instrumentation ...

December 06, 2023

Part 3 covers even more on Observability: Observability will move up the organization to support the sustainability and FinOps drive. The combined pressure of needing to adopt more sustainable practices and tackle rising cloud costs will catapult observability from an IT priority to a business requirement in 2024 ...

December 05, 2023

Part 2 covers more on Observability: In 2024, observability platforms will embrace and innovate with new technologies like GenAI for real-time analytics, becoming the fulcrum for digital experience management ...

December 04, 2023

The Holiday Season means it is time for APMdigest's annual list of Application Performance Management (APM) predictions, covering IT performance topics. Industry experts — from analysts and consultants to the top vendors — offer thoughtful, insightful, and often controversial predictions on how APM, Observability, AIOps and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2024. Part 1 covers APM and Observability ...

November 30, 2023

To help you stay on top of the ever-evolving tech scene, Automox IT experts shake the proverbial magic eight ball and share their predictions about tech trends in the coming year. From M&A frenzies to sustainable tech and automation, these forecasts paint an exciting picture of the future ...

November 29, 2023
The past few years have presented numerous challenges for businesses: a pandemic, rising interest rates, supply chain disruptions, and geopolitical conflict that sent shockwaves across the global economy. But change may finally be on the horizon. According to a recent report by Endava ... a majority of executives confirmed they are feeling optimistic about the current business climate, and as a result, are forecasting larger IT budgets, increased technology funding and rollout, and prioritized innovation in the coming year ...
November 28, 2023

Incident management processes are not keeping pace with the demands of modern operations teams, failing to meet the needs of SREs as well as platform and ops teams. Results from the State of DevOps Automation and AI Survey, commissioned by Transposit, point to an incident management paradox. Despite nearly 60% of ITOps and DevOps professionals reporting they have a defined incident management process that's fully documented in one place and over 70% saying they have a level of automation that meets their needs, teams are unable to quickly resolve incidents ...

November 27, 2023

Today, in the world of enterprise technology, the challenges posed by legacy Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) systems have long been a source of concern for IT departments. In many instances, this promising solution has become an organizational burden, hindering progress, depleting resources, and taking a psychological and operational toll on employees ...

November 22, 2023

Within retail organizations across the world, IT teams will be bracing themselves for a hectic holiday season ... While this is an exciting opportunity for retailers to boost sales, it also intensifies severe risk. Any application performance slipup will cause consumers to turn their back on brands, possibly forever. Online shoppers will be completely unforgiving to any retailer who doesn't deliver a seamless digital experience ...

November 21, 2023

Black Friday is a time when consumers can cash in on some of the biggest deals retailers offer all year long ... Nearly two-thirds of consumers utilize a retailer's web and mobile app for holiday shopping, raising the stakes for competitors to provide the best online experience to retain customer loyalty. Perforce's 2023 Black Friday survey sheds light on consumers' expectations this time of year and how developers can properly prepare their applications for increased online traffic ...