Skip to main content

The Digital War Room in Changing Times: The Impacts of DevOps, Cloud and SecOps

Dennis Drogseth

This is the third in a series of three blogs directed at recent EMA research presented in a webinar on April 11, with replay now available. The first blog provided a general introduction to the highlights of the research, while the second blog focused more on organization and process.

Start with Opening the Gates to the Digital War Room - What is it Now, and What is it Likely to Become?

Start with Organization and Process (Or Lack Thereof) in the Digital War Room

In this blog we'll look at three areas that have emerged in a spotlight in and of themselves — as signs of changing times — let alone as they may impact digital war room decision making. They are the growing focus on development and agile/DevOps; the impacts of cloud; and the growing need for security and operations (SecOps) to team more effectively.

But first a few key takeaways from the first two blogs to ground new readers and remind past readers:

■ These insights and data points are taken from research done in Q1 of this year across 272 respondents in North America and Europe.

■ We left open — to our respondents — whether the digital war room was virtual, physical, or hybrid. (The majority were hybrid. Purely virtual were the least strongly represented.)

■ We found that the digital war room was, on the whole, a: growing, b. becoming more important as well as more inclusive; c. was generally moving toward a more defined and less ad hoc role; d. was becoming, at least by implication, more proactive.

The growing inclusiveness of the digital war room is, needless to say, foundational to our examination of the role of development and DevOps, cloud and SecOps discussed below.

Development and Agile/DevOps — a Growing Role for War Room Integration

Industry dialogs sometimes point to an agile revolution that's effectively dismantling the role of the war room, IT service management teams, and even central operations as a whole. And while the value of unique DevOps teams to coalesce around targeted applications shouldn't be dismissed, the parallel need for a central authority to handle full-stack concerns with an eye to business as well as IT priorities too often gets overlooked.

The digital war room research shines a light on what's really going on here. When we asked Over the last two years, how have development teams worked with operations and other teams in digital war room decision-making? We received the following answers:

■ Development has become more involved in war room decision making (37%)

■ Development's role has remained the same in war room decision making (32%)

■ Agile/DevOps has led to a separate track for war room decision making (16%)

■ Development has become less involved in war room decision making (15%)

In other words, 69% saw development as having either a growing role, or having a sustained role in the digital war room.

Moreover, when we tracked success rates in assuring overall service delivery and service performance, we saw dramatic alignment with those respondents where development had become more involved. Then, when we asked what respondents hoped for in the future, we saw that:

■ 39% indicated that development should become more involved in the digital war room.

■ 25% felt the level of development's involvement should stay the same.

■ 19% felt that development should become less involved.

■ 17% felt there should be a separate track for agile/DevOps decision making.

In other words — the trend toward war room inclusion of development and DevOps teams should continue along somewhat even lines. And once again, success rates favored those targeting increasing development/war room inclusion.

So then, how exactly does development team with operations in the digital war room? The answers, in ranked order, were, via:

■ A shared IT alerting system

■ Shared insights into end-user experience

■ Shared monitoring

■ Shared analytics

■ Incident alerts from the service desk

■ Social media for team-mode collaboration

■ Shared KPIs and alerts

Areas such as shared insights into end-user experience, shared analytics, and social media all point to proactive collaboration critical for DevOps and agile concerns as well as core incident handling — indicating a significant value for lifecycle application optimization.

The "Journey to the Cloud" — Good or Bad for Digital War Room Performance?

In our research, the average response indicated that about 20% of their workloads were in the public cloud, while 15% indicated that 50% or more were in the public cloud. So, was this good or bad for digital war room effectiveness? The answer was overall encouraging:

■ 50% claimed that cloud has made digital war room decision-making easier

■ 41% felt it was making things in the war room harder

■ Only 9% saw no change

When we asked those who felt cloud was making war room decision-making more difficult about the major reason why — the answers, in ranked order, were:

■ Cloud is requiring new skill sets and internal processes

■ Cloud has challenged war room efficiencies due to migration issues

■ Cloud is requiring new processes for interacting with cloud service providers

Security and Insecurity in the Digital War Room

In almost all my research, there are growing indications that security is becoming an ever more present concern for operations and ITSM teams more broadly. And in some unique SecOps research that EMA did last year, the movement is clearly bi-directional, or in other words a shared need that benefits both groups.

In terms of the digital war room, here are a few relevant highlights:

■ 32% of our respondents had some security-related involvement.

■ After ITSM and executive IT, the third most likely to own the digital war room was security/compliance/GRC/incident response.

Improved network security was tied with service performance when it came to optimizing war room performance in hybrid cloud environments. These were followed by integrated security and performance and integrated security and change.

Advanced IT Analytics (AIA), security information and event management (SIEM), and security threat intelligence and analysis led as the top three technologies for war room decision making.

Security-related issues led as the biggest roadblock to effective war room success.

Beyond all these data points, what should stand out is the growing role of digital war rooms in unifying IT in support of critical, cross-domain (including development) decision making. This may be a surprise to some. It was partly a surprise to me. But I was happy to see these war-room affirming results.

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

The Digital War Room in Changing Times: The Impacts of DevOps, Cloud and SecOps

Dennis Drogseth

This is the third in a series of three blogs directed at recent EMA research presented in a webinar on April 11, with replay now available. The first blog provided a general introduction to the highlights of the research, while the second blog focused more on organization and process.

Start with Opening the Gates to the Digital War Room - What is it Now, and What is it Likely to Become?

Start with Organization and Process (Or Lack Thereof) in the Digital War Room

In this blog we'll look at three areas that have emerged in a spotlight in and of themselves — as signs of changing times — let alone as they may impact digital war room decision making. They are the growing focus on development and agile/DevOps; the impacts of cloud; and the growing need for security and operations (SecOps) to team more effectively.

But first a few key takeaways from the first two blogs to ground new readers and remind past readers:

■ These insights and data points are taken from research done in Q1 of this year across 272 respondents in North America and Europe.

■ We left open — to our respondents — whether the digital war room was virtual, physical, or hybrid. (The majority were hybrid. Purely virtual were the least strongly represented.)

■ We found that the digital war room was, on the whole, a: growing, b. becoming more important as well as more inclusive; c. was generally moving toward a more defined and less ad hoc role; d. was becoming, at least by implication, more proactive.

The growing inclusiveness of the digital war room is, needless to say, foundational to our examination of the role of development and DevOps, cloud and SecOps discussed below.

Development and Agile/DevOps — a Growing Role for War Room Integration

Industry dialogs sometimes point to an agile revolution that's effectively dismantling the role of the war room, IT service management teams, and even central operations as a whole. And while the value of unique DevOps teams to coalesce around targeted applications shouldn't be dismissed, the parallel need for a central authority to handle full-stack concerns with an eye to business as well as IT priorities too often gets overlooked.

The digital war room research shines a light on what's really going on here. When we asked Over the last two years, how have development teams worked with operations and other teams in digital war room decision-making? We received the following answers:

■ Development has become more involved in war room decision making (37%)

■ Development's role has remained the same in war room decision making (32%)

■ Agile/DevOps has led to a separate track for war room decision making (16%)

■ Development has become less involved in war room decision making (15%)

In other words, 69% saw development as having either a growing role, or having a sustained role in the digital war room.

Moreover, when we tracked success rates in assuring overall service delivery and service performance, we saw dramatic alignment with those respondents where development had become more involved. Then, when we asked what respondents hoped for in the future, we saw that:

■ 39% indicated that development should become more involved in the digital war room.

■ 25% felt the level of development's involvement should stay the same.

■ 19% felt that development should become less involved.

■ 17% felt there should be a separate track for agile/DevOps decision making.

In other words — the trend toward war room inclusion of development and DevOps teams should continue along somewhat even lines. And once again, success rates favored those targeting increasing development/war room inclusion.

So then, how exactly does development team with operations in the digital war room? The answers, in ranked order, were, via:

■ A shared IT alerting system

■ Shared insights into end-user experience

■ Shared monitoring

■ Shared analytics

■ Incident alerts from the service desk

■ Social media for team-mode collaboration

■ Shared KPIs and alerts

Areas such as shared insights into end-user experience, shared analytics, and social media all point to proactive collaboration critical for DevOps and agile concerns as well as core incident handling — indicating a significant value for lifecycle application optimization.

The "Journey to the Cloud" — Good or Bad for Digital War Room Performance?

In our research, the average response indicated that about 20% of their workloads were in the public cloud, while 15% indicated that 50% or more were in the public cloud. So, was this good or bad for digital war room effectiveness? The answer was overall encouraging:

■ 50% claimed that cloud has made digital war room decision-making easier

■ 41% felt it was making things in the war room harder

■ Only 9% saw no change

When we asked those who felt cloud was making war room decision-making more difficult about the major reason why — the answers, in ranked order, were:

■ Cloud is requiring new skill sets and internal processes

■ Cloud has challenged war room efficiencies due to migration issues

■ Cloud is requiring new processes for interacting with cloud service providers

Security and Insecurity in the Digital War Room

In almost all my research, there are growing indications that security is becoming an ever more present concern for operations and ITSM teams more broadly. And in some unique SecOps research that EMA did last year, the movement is clearly bi-directional, or in other words a shared need that benefits both groups.

In terms of the digital war room, here are a few relevant highlights:

■ 32% of our respondents had some security-related involvement.

■ After ITSM and executive IT, the third most likely to own the digital war room was security/compliance/GRC/incident response.

Improved network security was tied with service performance when it came to optimizing war room performance in hybrid cloud environments. These were followed by integrated security and performance and integrated security and change.

Advanced IT Analytics (AIA), security information and event management (SIEM), and security threat intelligence and analysis led as the top three technologies for war room decision making.

Security-related issues led as the biggest roadblock to effective war room success.

Beyond all these data points, what should stand out is the growing role of digital war rooms in unifying IT in support of critical, cross-domain (including development) decision making. This may be a surprise to some. It was partly a surprise to me. But I was happy to see these war-room affirming results.

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...