DevOpsUnderstanding the Differences between DevOps and CloudOps

Business managers sometimes confuse DevOps with CloudOps, which can lead to hiring the wrong kind of person for a particular role. Our goal here is to explain the difference—and also how DevOps and CloudOps relate to each other. 

DevOps is primarily the automation and optimization of the application development lifecycle, including post-launch fixes and updates. It uses continuous development, integration, testing, and deployment of cloud, computer, and downloadable applications. It also focuses on IT operations as they relate to application performance and availability. 

CloudOps, short for Cloud Operations, is DevOps applied to the public cloud along with the organizational structures to support it. The goal is to optimize delivery of IT services and workloads that are run in the public cloud. This includes capacity planning and asset management, so that you can increase or reduce capacity when needed without a further investment in cloud-based hardware, memory, or storage. 

The cloud is foundational to business growth, efficiency, innovation, and improved customer experience through better service and products. But this ecosystem is expanding and growing more complex for businesses, which affects competitiveness. Lack of adaptability and resilience will severely affect 20% of the Fortune 500 before 2021’s end, Forrester predicts.

A cornerstone solution is a CloudOps strategy that encompasses DevOps for unified management, monitoring, security and performance. The challenge comes in understanding how CloudOps and DevOps truly differ and how they are connected to deliver that strategy. 

CloudOps and DevOps Differences and Similarities

On a fundamental level, CloudOps and DevOps are completely different. CloudOps is about managing, provisioning, and setting cloud limits. The goal is to provide a single-pane-of-glass structure on what you’re doing across the public cloud through process automation. DevOps principles operate on continuous delivery, continuous feedback, and continuous improvement of application development.

There is also a clear overlap because DevOps is a part of CloudOps, with both seeking continuous business operations, innovation, and improvement, where:

• CloudOps resource management uses DevOps principles and IT operations to speed business process efficiency through cloud architectures.

• CloudOps brings technical improvements to DevOps practices to improve application development and the continuous integration / continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline.

CloudOps along with DevOps practices can deliver these major benefits to application development and delivery through:

• Improving automation of the development infrastructure

• Simplification of Cloud provisioning and application deployment

• Continuous monitoring and management of both the applications and underlying Cloud infrastructure

Application delivery and updates are a major part of service and product offerings for businesses. The close alignment of CloudOps and DevOps throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC) leads to application innovations and improved user experiences for internal app end users. It also creates better external application services and customer experiences. 

CloudOps and DevOps do this through their continuous improvement and integration. This makes the entire SDLC faster, more efficient, and more accurate for delivering, updating, and maintaining applications, which benefits developers, end users, and customers. 

Since CloudOps is essentially DevOps applied to the public cloud and its supporting infrastructures, it also has a big part in solving today’s complex hybrid and multi-cloud environments challenges:

• Legacy network architectures struggle with bandwidth needs from applications

• Applications, workloads, and databases spread across multiple cloud environments

• CI/CD pipelines are potentially managing thousands of microservices for hundreds of applications, which leads to a whole new set of management problems due to scalability

• Security silos across the entire cloud ecosystem leave gaps in practices and governance that create vulnerabilities

• IT teams lack the specialized skills to implement this new DevOps and Cloud computing structure

The principal source of that complexity is too many choices in cloud provider hosting environments along with best-of-breed service and tool selection. That’s why IT organizations are now implementing a Cloud Center of Excellence (COE) to support, strengthen, and further unify CloudOps and DevOps.

DevOps, CloudOps and Cloud COE Experts

Successful business outcomes through CloudOps, DevOps, and a unifying Cloud COE structure require the right expertise and guidance to support making it a reality. That translates to experience in establishing approaches, playbooks, tool sets, skills, and ongoing processes to achieve sustainable long-term success. 

Our Winmill team has a long history of expertise and proven results that starts with listening and collaboration with the single goal of a robust and unified CloudOps and DevOps transformation. We help businesses do this by embracing the inherent changes that define what DevOps means for changing software development lifecycle needs.

Your IT team and business need a partner who understands the underlying cloud-based services and tool choices. That helps us both focus on creating a Cloud COE that integrates CloudOps and DevOps on a unified management platform and how applications, workloads, and data leverage those services. To learn how Winmill can partner with your IT team and business to make CloudOps and DevOps work holistically for business outcomes, call us at 212-850-MILL (6455) or email us at inquiry@winmill.com.