Agility and DevOps : A Megatrend in the SAP Community

As a new focus of the conference programme this year, the topic of organizational techniques was further expanded and, in addition to Agile, an entire section on DevOps was included.

Developer Week has expanded its program around Agile, DevOps and Co. to take account of current developments. For the first time, there will therefore be a separate series of lectures on DevOps, while the new Project Practice track will shed light on the problems that frequently arise in practice in the field of project management.

DevOps is also becoming increasingly important in the SAP community. In a user survey conducted in the middle of last year, the following picture emerged: with an average rating of 1.8 on a scale of 1 (very important) to 5 (not important at all), financial service providers as well as industry and commerce rate the influence of automation on DevOps as high.

This confirms the trend towards automating the release process in order to put new software into operation faster, more securely and well documented. Shorter innovation cycles enable companies to adapt their processes promptly to new market requirements or offer new services.

2016 will be the year of automation: while traditional IT solutions will continue to focus on reducing technology costs, new IT methods will focus on time-to-market, rapid application development (DevOps) and close alignment with business lines within companies.

Automation is playing an increasingly important role in this, but according to PAC analysts, only 24% of German companies have a DevOps concept to date. Established providers from the banking, insurance and transportation sectors are using these to continuously introduce innovative, secure and user-friendly solutions and strengthen their competitive advantages.

Companies involved in these processes will have more than doubled their software development capacities by 2018. However, a positive change within the structures requires innovative technologies as well as the training and further education of employees.

Only these can drive fundamental, slow change. However, with the right technologies, companies are expected to significantly increase their sales growth in 2016. In 2016, the second is the new minute.

Speed of response is more important than ever - for everyone from developers to CEOs. Companies that prepare for potential problems in good time and have a development solution for fast, automated deployments are in the best position to deal with problems immediately.

Companies are becoming increasingly dependent on their IT systems and at the same time have to keep pace with the demands of digital change. In future, IT departments should therefore focus their capacities on legacy systems and their management as well as on innovations.

CIOs who do not drive this transformation forward will fall even further behind in 2016. According to PAC, however, the practical use of DevOps is not widespread: Only eight percent of the companies surveyed have gained extensive experience; for them, DevOps is an integral part of all software development projects.

A further 24 percent use DevOps in individual projects. In contrast, DevOps is still being discussed in around one in four companies (23%). For many, it is not yet an issue at all (37 percent).

Company-specific applications are the preferred target of DevOps initiatives, according to 88% of respondents. Furthermore, it is primarily web and SAP applications that are to be transferred from development to operation more quickly with the help of DevOps.

However, DevOps is still rarely used in forward-looking fields (IoT/Big Data) - probably also because such projects are generally less common and are often pursued outside the traditional IT department.

The goals of IT managers when implementing DevOps are essentially more efficiency, more innovation and more quality, with the CIO usually pushing for the concept to be implemented.