DevOps

What Is DevOps?

DevOps (Development Operations) is the confluence of programming, quality assurance and operations. DevOps has existed in one form or another since the beginning of the digital age, but today the term is used to describe a very specific goal – support for the continuous release of high-quality software, typically in a high-velocity (i.e. Agile) environment.

DevOps is a combination of technologies and processes, with an emphasis on integration and automation. It includes application development with integrated version control; continuous application builds; integrated quality assurance throughout the SDLC; automated deployments; and integrated performance monitoring and feedback loops.

There is no single DevOps solution. Every organization implements DevOps tools and processes based on its size, volume and scope of application development, required speed to market, tolerance for defects, and regulatory compliance. There are dozens of software products that support DevOps, including agile work management, version control, build servers, static code scanners, dynamic code scanners, functional testing, defect management and security management.

The Winmill Difference

Winmill has deep and broad experience in DevOps. We have worked with hundreds of companies over the years, and understand above all that no two companies are the same. What works for one company may not be practical for another. However, our experience allows us to share ideas and best practices that you may not have yet considered. If you are ready to talk DevOps, it's time to call Winmill.

Continuous Integration & Delivery

In a traditional SDLC, developers check out code for extended periods while they build, modify or repair. But the longer that code is checked out, the more obsolete it becomes and the less likely it will integrate with other components when it is returned to the repository. Enter continuous integration, where developers continuously integrate their work with the rest of the team. Talk to Winmill about implementing and getting the most out of continuous integration.

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Collaboration

DevOps creates an environment where developers and IT operations are (finally) working together. The use of containers simplifies the process of building and deploying applications while breaking down the silos in an IT organization. A successful DevOps architecture uses tools and processes to automate tasks that historically have been manual and slow. This architecture helps engineers independently perform tasks, such as deploying code or provisioning infrastructure, that otherwise would have required help from other teams. Collaboration = Velocity.

Automation

DevOps relies heavily on automation tools. Jenkins, Docker, Kubernetes, Bamboo, Puppet, Octopus, ECS… the list goes on and on. These tools open up whole new worlds of efficiency, integration, velocity and scale. But DevOps automation is much more than a collection of tools; it is also the processes and standards that you implement with the tools. Winmill can help you to select the right tools, and define the right processes, to bring your organization to the next level of DevOps automation.

Continuous Integration

Continuous integration is a key concept in DevOps which discourages individual developers from working on checked out code for long periods of time in isolation – generally more than a day – and instead encourages them to push their code back into the shared repository where the rest of the team can see it, evaluate it and integrate it into what they are building. This allows developers to bridge the gap between Collaboration and Continuous Delivery, since it naturally leads to increased collaboration and allows for changes to be continuously delivered to dev & test environments via automated deployment pipelines.

Continuous Delivery

Continuous delivery is the natural extension of continuous integration – rapidly pushing code through development and testing cycles and into production. The shift-left concepts of continuous integration and continuous testing are designed to improve quality throughout the process, so that deployment is no longer a throw-it-over-the-wall endeavor. The containerization of applications makes deployment easier than ever before. Updates can be deployed quickly, with high confidence that they will be secure, scalable and performant. If you are ready to talk about DevOps, and how continuous integration and delivery can work for your organization, it’s time to talk to Winmill Software.

Continuous Testing

Quality Assurance has always been the Achilles Heel of application development. Developers don’t like to test. This gave rise to the QA Department, which is responsible for finding and publishing the defects in developers’ work. This naturally set up a contentious relationship between developers and testers, who often report to different people with different measures of success. Integrated Continuous Testing can dramatically improve product quality, supporting the highly-touted and rarely-achieved “shift left.”

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Quality Assurance

Quality Assurance has always been the Achilles Heel of application development. Developers don’t like to test. This gave rise to the QA Department, which is responsible for finding and publishing the defects in developers’ work. This naturally set up a contentious relationship between developers and testers, who often report to different people with different measures of success. The process of building, testing, finding defects and remediating, and then repeating… is slow and tedious.

Imagine now a new paradigm where developers test their own work, according to their own schedule. This is not the traditional running of a handful of functional test scripts, however. Continuous testing relies heavily on automation, and the integration of testing tools into the DevOps architecture. As code is checked in, it is automatically scanned for vulnerabilities. Test scripts can be automatically executed to confirm there has been no deprecation of functionality. Load tests can be executed to confirm the scalability and performance of the new code. Continuous testing enables you to finally “shift left,” where a defect found early in the development lifecycle costs significantly less than if that defect is discovered in production.

Performance Testing

Performance testing takes on many forms, and performance failures have many root causes. A comprehensive performance suite tests bandwidth, network throughput, server scalability, database scalability, application code efficiency and more. Make sure your application can handle the expected and unexpected. Winmill can help you the test the performance of your existing applications, and can help you to build ground-up performance into your new applications.

Application Security Testing

There are plenty of cybersecurity companies that will help you scan your applications and provide colorful reports on what they found. The problem is that they can’t (or won’t) filter out false positives, and they don’t tell you how to actually fix the problem. This is because being able to configure and run a scan is very different than being able to interpret and address the scan results.

Winmill has expertise with all of the market leading AppSec products: Acunetix, Checkmarx, Contrast Security, Fortify, Veracode, Web Inspect, and more, and we can help you to integrate these tools into your DevOps architecture.

Imagine checking in code and automatically triggering a source code scan; vulnerabilities are automatically logged and forwarded to the developer for review. Is it time to turn your DevOps into DevSecOps? Then it’s time to call Winmill!

Cyber Security

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DevOps Architecture

A traditional DevOps architecture is an organic creature; it grows – often uncontrolled – as developers and operations engineers cobble together best of breed tools to maximize efficiency. But at the end of the day, the collection of disparate tools and processes can become impossible to manage. Winmill can help you to consolidate into a single, manageable architecture designed for automation, velocity and scale.

Data Center

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Container Architecture

Containers simplify and accelerate the build-test-deploy lifecycle. And with today’s powerful orchestration tools, containers are the foundation of a DevOps architecture that supports velocity and scale. Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, Amazon ECS… We can help you evaluate and deploy container and orchestration technology, and implement the processes to bring your DevOps to the next level of efficiency and automation.

DevOps Re-Architecture

A traditional DevOps architecture is an organic creature; it grows – often uncontrolled – as developers and operations engineers cobble together best of breed tools to maximize efficiency. But at the end of the day, the collection of disparate tools and processes can become impossible to manage. WinMill can help you to consolidate into a single, manageable architecture designed for automation, velocity and scale.

Cloud Native DevOps

Moving to the cloud is the logical next step in the evolution of DevOps. The cloud introduces a whole new world of possibility – and complexity – into software development. The options for containers, microservices, continuous testing, automated deployments… it can be overwhelming. But when deployed properly, it can be the most powerful and cost-effective operating environment you’ve ever imagined. If it’s time to move your DevOps to the cloud, it’s time to call Winmill.

Migration

Every organization has its unique questions, considerations and challenges when planning a move to the cloud. These can range from how to rapidly release high quality code, to building a secure network that meets our customer and regulatory requirements, to how can we take advantage of all the cloud offers without throwing away all the good work we’ve done in the past. How do we do this move in an orderly manner that doesn’t impact our current business? What should our short term vs long term goals be? Winmill can help you answer these questions and navigate these murky waters while minimizing missteps and false starts.

Transformation

Moving applications into the cloud often involves rearchitecting those applications to shift them from a heavy weight traditional data center driven architecture, to one that is more agile and takes advantage of how easy it can be to spin servers up and down or to avoid the OS layer altogether and use managed services in the cloud. Shifting to a Microservices Architecture is a great example of a design pattern that can take advantage of the benefits of the cloud. Not only can the cost of hosting these rearchitected applications improve, but also code reusability, maintenance, change order cost and troubleshooting time tables all improve after a more agile, cloud ready architecture is put in place.

Native Cloud Development

Learning to develop natively for the cloud can be challenging. Business and customer requirements have to be met with an architecture that can benefit from all the advantages that bring us into the cloud in the first place. Often this process is much smoother if an application is “born in the cloud”. This means that the entire code development lifecycle is tightly woven with your cloud infrastructure and DevOps architecture. If each iteration of the product is built by and deployed to the cloud, then your final release to production can be literally as easy as pushing a button. Winmill can help you get there, whether with minor backend architectural changes, or an entire shifting of your development approach.

Cloud Audit

Security Audit of Network Architecture, Cost Effectiveness, DevOps Strategy, Development Lifecycle, Disaster Recovery, and continuity.

Every organization has its unique questions, considerations and challenges when planning a move to the cloud. These can range from how to rapidly release high quality code, to building a secure network that meets our customer and regulatory requirements, to how can we take advantage of all the cloud offers without throwing away all the good work we’ve done in the past. How do we do this move in an orderly manner that doesn’t impact our current business? What should our short term vs long term goals be? Winmill can help you answer these questions and navigate these murky waters while minimizing missteps and false starts.

Moving applications into the cloud often involves rearchitecting those applications to shift them from a heavy weight traditional data center driven architecture, to one that is more agile and takes advantage of how easy it can be to spin servers up and down or to avoid the OS layer altogether and use managed services in the cloud. Shifting to a Microservices Architecture is a great example of a design pattern that can take advantage of the benefits of the cloud. Not only can the cost of hosting these rearchitected applications improve, but also code reusability, maintenance, change order cost and troubleshooting time tables all improve after a more agile, cloud ready architecture is put in place.

Learning to develop natively for the cloud can be challenging. Business and customer requirements have to be met with an architecture that can benefit from all the advantages that bring us into the cloud in the first place. Often this process is much smoother if an application is “born in the cloud”. This means that the entire code development lifecycle is tightly woven with your cloud infrastructure and DevOps architecture. If each iteration of the product is built by and deployed to the cloud, then your final release to production can be literally as easy as pushing a button. Winmill can help you get there, whether with minor backend architectural changes, or an entire shifting of your development approach.

Security Audit of Network Architecture, Cost Effectiveness, DevOps Strategy, Development Lifecycle, Disaster Recovery, and continuity.