Accelerate Application Development through DevOps Automation

Transcription

1 Accelerate Application Development through DevOps Automation Giridhara Madakashira, Solutions Head Solutions Strategy Architecture Group (SSAG) Sriraman K R, Product Architect Solutions Strategy & Architecture Group(SSAG)

2 Table of Contents Introduction The Challenge with Development and Testing DevOps Automation: Reduce Cost, Reduce Time to Market Cloud for Rapid Environment Provisioning and De-provisioning The Future of Application Lifecycle Management The Benefits Conclusion

3 The Challenge with Development and Testing New and innovative applications drive business. They enable growth. They often help address competitive pressure. Delays in application releases can result in business loss. The fact that application test environments rarely mimic a production or operations environment adds to testing cycles and costs. It would be fair to suggest that of all the challenges faced by organizations, perhaps the most frustrating is to reduce software development, testing and release cycle times. The solution has been to invest heavily in development and testing infrastructure, tools and processes. However, with the number of components, technologies and geographically distributed teams involved, provisioning has become a Herculean task. In fact, in several instances, the more the investment, the bigger could be the challenge. The growing development and testing lab sprawl and the constant environment setup and tear down costs are formidable. Over and above this is the reality of reproducing bugs and fixing them. Our observations over several years show that almost 30% of the defects can be attributed to environment issues. We know that 60% of development time goes into reproducing the problems that crop up in production environments. This is because development, testing and operation/ production environments are never similar making the task of recreating defects time consuming. So, does it make sense to simply bypass the activity that recreates the defects? If yes, how can this be enabled? There is another aspect to development and testing infrastructure that has CIOs worried. It is the fact that infrastructure utilization is fairly volatile and focused around major releases. 1 According to a study by IDC and IBM in 2008, most test servers run at 10% utilization, 30% of all defects are caused by wrongly configured servers and 85% of computing sites are idle. Anyone trying to push one line of code change into production knows the grim reality. Forrester's Q Global Release Management Online 2 Survey suggested that 39% of those surveyed take more than a day but less than a week, 18% take between two weeks and a month, 11% take a week to two weeks. 03

4 DevOps Automation: Reduce Cost, Reduce Time to Market Development and operations are two different worlds. Development thrives on flexibility; it is a messy environment where stuff just spills all over the lab. Operations take over where development ends. Operations demands standardization through centralized and structured IT. Both teams require very different skill sets and have very little understanding of each other, leading to failure. The key to success is to recast the DevOps relationship using automated solutions that ensure better collaboration between the two entities. We believe that the IDC and IMB findings point to the fact that the industry has to go beyond traditional use of Agile, Lean and Six Sigma methodologies to bridge the gaps between development and operations. DevOps Automation is the new trend addressing bottlenecks, inefficiencies, capacities and the complexities of environment provisioning (see Figure 1 below). It holds the promise of delivering applications faster with seamless release management even as it raises quality by fusing development and operations activities (and integrating testing between the two functions). DevOps Automation could be the holy grail of application development. DevOps Automation is interesting because of its ability to address a set of pain points such as: ŸManage lead-time for procuring and provisioning the environment ŸMaintain consistent environment throughout the application lifecycle ŸMaintain heterogeneous environments in parallel ŸManage distributed teams and team members ŸEnsure effective sharing of environment between developers and testers ŸReduce the number of testers rather than increase them ŸImprove software quality ŸEnsure that IT gets the standardization it wants and Development gets the flexibility it demands Cloud for Rapid Environment Provisioning and De-provisioning We have seen that investing in development and testing infrastructure is risky because the infrastructure can get outdated quickly. Therefore, on the Service Request Service Available side of provisioning end-to-end development and test environments aligned with operations, wisdom dictates flexible, cloud-based solutions. Study Design and Plan Many weeks or Months Procure Detail Design Deploy Test Cloud allows for near infinite provisioning in a pay-as-you-go model that can be configured with a few simple clicks of the mouse. The self-service model allows users to select applications and versions, lets them decide Traditional the environment configuration and choose from provision-build and deploy-test workflows. > 30% faster Study Config Deploy Test DevOps Automation 100% increase in agility Benefits ŸRapid deployment of applications. ŸManage hybrid and complex eenvironments ŸReduced infra cost ŸHigher productivity ŸFaster deployment ŸHigher quality Today, the cloud environment is well understood, so it is easy to see how it can help share, release and acquire environments; how it can quickly help decommission environments; and rapidly clone the required environments. Now imagine all this as a software appliance that can be customized to your environment and creatively stitched to manage your problem - and at the same time be deployed with no integration requirements. With a pluggable architecture, the solution can support heterogeneous environments with different tools and technologies and a hybrid cloud model. Figure 1: Typical time taken for provisioning and how DevOps Automation can reduce it Supporting heterogeneous environments and the importance of integration with Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools must not be overlooked. When ignored, it becomes a persistent problem that CIOs will find difficult to live with. Typical ALM tools that assist in capturing requirements, building source code/ compilers, version control tools, bug trackers etc are the ones that need attention. 04

5 NW W SW S NE E SE Here is the other reality: If your IT systems are built around a heterogeneous environment, experience tells you that the level of integration between competitive products is minimal. It's surprising how many organizations will settle for the low level integration. This is because they are backed up against a wall and see no other option. Product vendors offer what they view as acceptable integration and stubbornly refuse to go beyond it. Our approach has been to fill this gap through tighter integration between competitive products. The Future of Application Lifecycle Management Even before developers write the first line of code, they need to perform a whole bunch of functions and tasks. Think of this as the prep area for developers where they need access to tools, methodologies, frameworks, project and design documents, knowledge management capabilities, access to reusable code libraries, code validation tools, and a plethora of diagnostic tools etc. The nature and structure of the prep area depends on the kind of task required to be performed. It would be different for developers of PHP, Java, ASP,.NET etc. Provisioning the prep area or more appropriately, a landing desktop with the right tools based on the developer's needs is the starting point for all development. DevOps as a service enables developers to connect to such futuristic virtual work environments, using a thin client or a low-end configuration system. These virtual desktops running in remote datacenters, are equipped with pre-installed standardized tool-sets required for different phases of the SDLC. The set up permits increased work efficiency. They are also secured and conform to security norms of the user organization. The outcome of such provisioning appears to be convenience combined with efficiency. However, the more valuable outcome is higher code consistency, quality and improved developer productivity. This can be attributed to the standardization in tools and the work environment. In many instances virtual provisioning also results in easier license management and lowered license costs using a pay-as-you-go model. The cost advantages are magnified several times over for tools that are expensive or those that are necessary but used infrequently. It is equally important to have a virtual lab" within a private cloud behind every virtual desktop. This enables developers to carry out various tests and validation of the code being written. In addition, users can be confident that system downtime will be minimized using intelligent IT operations that leverage predictive analytics. The analytics engine has the ability to alert users to expected failures and suggest corrective action to reduce downtime. The Benefits The core idea is bringing developers and testers together within a collaborative environment, accelerating the application development lifecycle and improving overall productivity (Table 1). Accelerating application development using DevOps Automation* Area of impact Improvement Lab utilization Increased by 75% Productivity Increased by 40% Deployment management Reduced by 30 to 40% Software development effort Reduced by 25 to 30% Operations overheads Reduced by 10 to 15% Table 1. *Wipro experience Faster issue resolutions Reduced downtime Conclusion N Virtual Desktop Dev & QA Workstations ALM tools Project Documents Virtual Lab Automated build / deploy / test Env sharing & bug snapshots Virtual training labs Figure 2: DevOps as a service Ongoing assessment of configuration Historical data and changes over time IT Operations Metering & chargebacks Patch Management Helpdesk & ticketing DevOps Automation has the ability to transform application development, testing and deployment. The self-service solution with accurate cloudbased provisioning can instantly bring down investments in infrastructure. The bigger benefit, from a competitive standpoint, is reduced development time and improved quality of software. It is accurate to suggest that DevOps Automation brings development and operations closer by establishing tighter collaboration between the two. But, it is an error to assume that this is its sole focus. DevOps Automation finds true merit because it is able to create a flexible development environment that remains in sync with best practices in production related to technologies, processes and metrics measurement. That, as any CIO will confirm, is a major hurdle crossed. 05

6 References / Citations 1. Industry Developments and Models Global Testing Services: Coming of Age, IDC, 2008 and IBM Internal Reports 2. About the Authors Giridhara Madakashira leads Solutions Group in Wipro's Manufacturing and Hi-Tech Business. He brings in broad experience in platform and system engineering. His engineering experience extends through virtualization technologies and Systems Architecture. He has built and led several successful engineering teams giridhara.madak@wipro.com Sriraman is part of Solutions Strategy & Architecture Group in Wipro's Manufacturing & Hi-Tech business unit. In his role, he is responsible for Next-Gen, Advanced Business Solutions Incubation, Solution Strategy, Architecture, Design and Development and leads a team of technical specialists. He has rich experience in architecting, designing and development of enterprise applications on Microsoft platforms for various customers in the manufacturing and hitech industries. sriraman.raghunathan@wipro.com About Wipro Technologies Wipro Technologies, the global IT business of Wipro Limited (NYSE:WIT) is a leading Information Technology, Consulting and Outsourcing company, that delivers solutions to enable its clients do business better. Wipro Technologies delivers winning business outcomes through its deep industry experience and a 360 degree view of Business through Technology helping clients create successful and adaptive businesses. A company recognized globally for its comprehensive portfolio of services, a practitioner s approach to delivering innovation and an organization wide commitment to sustainability, Wipro Technologies has 135,000 employees and clients across 54 countries. For more information, please visit or contact us at info@wipro.com 06

7 DO BUSINESS BETTER NYSE:WIT OVER 135,000 EMPLOYEES 54 COUNTRIES CONSULTING SYSTEM INTEGRATION OUTSOURCING WIPRO TECHNOLOGIES, DODDAKANNELLI, SARJAPUR ROAD, BANGALORE , INDIA TEL: +91 (80) , FAX: +91 (80) Copyright Wipro Technologies. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without express written permission from Wipro Technologies. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners. Specifications subject to change without notice.