Investing in DevOps automation brings significant benefits to organizations – including improving software quality by more than 60 percent, reducing deployment errors by 57 percent, and significantly reducing IT costs by 55 percent.
These are the results of an independent global study by Dynatrace, the leading provider of unified observability and security. For the analysis, 450 IT professionals in large companies were surveyed, including 150 in Europe. However, the report also shows that automation processes in companies are still in their infancy. It also proves that data-driven and AI-supported automation processes are necessary to respond to business needs. The Dynatrace 2023 DevOps Automation Pulse Report is available to download free of charge.
A clearly defined strategy is usually missing
According to the study, DevOps automation processes are still at an early stage of maturity in most companies. The lack of a clearly defined DevOps automation strategy, widespread toolchain complexity, and challenges in analyzing maintainability and security data prevent organizations from getting the full benefit of their investments. This is shown by the following results:
- Only 38 percent of companies have a clearly defined DevOps automation strategy as the basis for their investments.
- On average The companies surveyed have so far managed to automate just over half (56 percent) of their end-to-end DevOps lifecycle.
- On average Use more than seven different tools for DevOps automation.
- The biggest obstaclesThe things stopping companies from automating new DevOps use cases include security concerns (54 percent), difficulty operationalizing data (54 percent), and toolchain complexity (53 percent).
- 71 percent of companies are already using observability data to drive automation decisions and improvements in DevOps workflows.
- 85 percent of companies However, they face challenges when using observability and security data for DevOps automation. The three biggest challenges are: inaccessible data (51 percent), isolated data (43 percent) and the fact that the data has to go through many systems for analysis (41 percent).
Necessary DevOps automation
The study highlights the need for data-driven and AI-powered automation techniques that enable companies to better respond to business needs. Bernd Greifeneder, Chief Technology Officer at Dynatrace, qualifies this requirement: “As more and more companies use cloud-native software delivery, DevOps automation has become a strategic imperative. The proliferation of Kubernetes architectures and technology stacks that exceed our human capabilities to manage are increasing the need for automated orchestration and ecosystem protection. Companies are trying to meet this need by creating automation scripts using a growing number of open source tools.
The whole thing is then combined with DIY approaches and manual effort.” However, Greifeneder sees problems in this often prevalent fragmented approach that are gradually becoming more apparent: “Teams are trapped in data silos, isolated automation areas and reactive, manual workflows and security measures. You therefore need a unified, AI-powered approach to DevOps automation. Otherwise it is not possible for them to drive innovation while ensuring software quality and security. Data-driven automation is key to accelerating innovation in the cloud-native era and meeting customer expectations.”
DevOps automation investment projects
- 54 percent of companies invest in platforms designed to facilitate tool integration and collaboration between teams involved in automation projects.
- With regard to investments in DevOps automation over the next 12 months, 55 percent of companies surveyed said they would invest in security and compliance management. Infrastructure provision and management (52 percent) and investments in performance optimization (51 percent) were also mentioned particularly frequently.
- 59 percent of companies expect Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Bard to have a significant impact on their DevOps automation capabilities. The three most important benefits include increasing productivity and reducing manual effort (57 percent), improved collaboration between development, security and operations (56 percent) and the ability for teams to automatically generate code (48th). Percent).
About Dynatrace
Dynatrace ensures that software works perfectly worldwide. Our unified software intelligence platform combines broad and deep observability and continuous run-time application security with the most advanced AIOps to deliver answers and intelligent automation from data at remarkable scale. This enables organizations to modernize and automate cloud operations, deliver software faster and more securely, and ensure flawless digital experiences.