The Year of DevOps: What’s Driving Adoption in 2023

If your business is focused on agile software development, chances are it leverages DevOps to make that happen.

DevOps uses practices and tools to automate the work of both software development and IT operations, which helps to shorten the lifecycle of systems development. There’s a reason the field is budding – the industry was valued at nearly $7 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach almost $60 billion by 2030.

DevOps is so valuable because any industry that needs IT and developers can benefit from its offerings including automated tooling, granting organizations entirely new skill sets for their teams to adopt. Nearly every industry on the planet has adopted DevOps, and expected growth in the years ahead will come from additional penetration inside the organizations that have begun using it.

The growth in DevOps will also drive the expansion of Kubernetes, as nearly two-thirds of organizations are currently using the technology. What’s more, the Veeam Data Protection Trends Report 2023 found that 92% of organizations are currently running or are planning to deploy containers, a key characteristic of Kubernetes.

Kubernetes is a vendor-neutral industry standard, which allows for greater choice and reduced costs, combined with multi-cloud support to consistently improve operations. Not only does it disrupt how enterprise applications are managed, but Kubernetes also provides cloud-native capabilities to help modernize new applications.

Although many industries are already leveraging its powerful containerized applications, Kubernetes has begun branching out into new areas in recent years. Lately, it has been deployed in both the smallest and largest companies, along with remote installations (including the IoT for oil drilling sites, telecom towers, and more). Organizations in the military and energy sector also require scale at the edge and have found significant benefits in bringing applications to the 21^st century with containers.

However, the future does carry some significant challenges for Kubernetes (and DevOps as a whole). Kubernetes requires developers to learn new skills, tooling, and practices, but it is very complex and can run through resources (both money and time).

But with these challenges comes a significant opportunity – and for organizations that are already leveraging Kubernetes within DevOps, as well as those who are just getting started, increased adoption will occur thanks to several key drivers:

Supplementing the skills gap

Nearly two-thirds of attendees at KubeCon 2022 were first-time attendees. That’s a great sign regarding the growing interest in the field, but it also highlights the biggest challenge facing Kubernetes – a constantly growing skills gap.

More enterprises implement Kubernetes every single day, but many don’t have the necessary pool of skilled workers who specialize in Kubernetes and containers. As IT employees get ramped up on the intricacies of containerized applications, they’ll have to gather key skills and knowledge quickly to help their organization manage Kubernetes workloads.

However, while the Kubernetes skills gap is an ongoing concern, we’re seeing additional learning platforms help close it. Organizations should look for training courses that offer a number of professionally reviewed labs on Kubernetes storage, security, observability, and application consistency. These types of courses are designed with developers in mind, aiming to help both seasoned veterans and newcomers in the community.

Rapidly improving technology

Part of the value of Kubernetes is that its approach for cloud-native helps improve adoption for both developers and operations as a whole. However, there are very few traditional tools that exist for cloud-native development. Fortunately, new Kubernetes-native tools can make up for the lack of specialized skills in the field to reduce time to market.

Just as exciting is the explosion in partnerships that are bringing even more capabilities to the Kubernetes platform. From VMware’s investment in Tanzu to RedHat’s OpenShift Virtualization, which brings VMs into the Kubernetes environment, there’s no shortage of activity in the space. A significant amount of interest has been focused on edge deployments of Kubernetes, as well.

Aside from simply improving technical capabilities, these advancements are helping to change the dialogue within organizations leveraging Kubernetes. It’s important for companies just starting out to focus on simplicity when choosing these tools, which will bring greater benefits in the long run. Working with trusted vendors is a must, too.

Following best practices & DevOps processes

The majority of problems in DevOps environments occur when organizations haven’t implemented processes and best practices for app development and management. For widespread adoption to occur, this has to change.

In 2022, 85 percent of organizations were victims of a ransomware attack, which is up from 76 percent one year prior. The ransomware threat is growing, and Kubernetes users have to be better prepared for them. Today’s most common attacks are Day-2 attacks and the result of known susceptibilities. That means they can be prevented. However, many new Kubernetes users incorrectly believe that the platform is secure just because it’s backed up in the cloud. With resiliency, though, reliable and regular backups are a must to ensure recovery of lost data.

Declarative policies can help prevent some of these issues by including must-have policies before an application is made live. This ensures that backups are scheduled to run automatically – in fact, you can also implement a policy to ensure that backups and disaster recovery are performed in different locations. These best practices keep things from slipping through the cracks and set your organization up for success.

It’s worth keeping an eye on how the DevOps and Kubernetes landscape plays out in the coming months, especially if you’re an organization thinking about containerization. However, it’s important to do your due diligence to understand overall needs and goals, which is a crucial first step in successful DevOps implementation.