Top 10 DevOps Trends in 2022
The impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on businesses and people is still here. From more remote workers to supply chain challenges no one saw coming, this past year has forced more innovation and creativity than ever. Developers and DevOps professionals are now suddenly in a world of opportunity, with a renewed focus on frequent improvements and new innovations alike.
Based on current trends and future predictions, here’s my 10 trends in the world of DevOps in 2022.
Resilience Testing
The DevOps community has been concentrating on resilience testing for a long time. There is a convergence of performance testing, observability, and resilience testing that is becoming increasingly commonplace.
So, when it comes to contemporary DevOps technologies, it’s safe to say that there’s a massive digital change happening across the board. The market will eventually recognize that both public and private clouds provide endless scalability.
Adoption of Low-Code Solutions
By the end of 2022, the majority of development environments are predicted to use low-code software. Low-code technologies are divisive in the DevOps world, but they’ve proved to help developers be more productive. Whether it’s DevSecOps, Kubernetes, microservices, or serverless computing, low-code solutions will allow developers to focus on the big picture.
The productivity boost is what will cause more developers to lean into the low-code trend in 2022. Low-code solutions will allow developers to focus on the bigger picture, whether it’s DevSecOps, Kubernetes, microservices, or serverless computing.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
IaC is more than just automation in DevOps, and it’s becoming increasingly important. It’s more akin to using configuration files to manage the entire IT infrastructure in the Cloud. Most significantly, it provides continuity by automatically provisioning and configuring all environments with no human error. IaC will continue to be the standard and major DevOps feature in 2021 and in the near future as more teams realize the benefits.
GitOps
GitOps is the practice of storing as much of the configuration in version control (namely Git) by merging code to ‘main’ trigger deployment workflows. Essentially, GitOps is a continuous deployment pattern that gives developers more control over code by creating a central source of truth that the team is using at all times.
This practice is increasingly more popular in DevOps areas like Infrastructure as Code (IaC). Having the state of a system located in a central place allows for more control, which allows developers to save time and energy by not needing to search through cloud provider consoles.
Serverless Computing
Serverless computing is a relatively new idea that has been around for over a decade. Enterprises have been slow to embrace the serverless framework, owing to two factors: fear of industry support and fear of return on investment. However, there are other benefits to being serverless that are becoming increasingly hard to overlook.
Efficiency and dependability are the two primary advantages of serverless computing. Without the burden of infrastructure management, enterprises can focus their resources on bigger priorities. Plus, serverless relieves the risk of potential maintenance issues that can occur with traditional frameworks. Enterprises may focus their resources on higher-priority tasks without having to worry about infrastructure administration. Furthermore, serverless architecture eliminates the danger of traditional frameworks’ potential maintenance concerns.
Microservices Architecture Growth
Microservices go hand-in-hand with serverless computing. With this concept, applications are broken into independent units, thereby giving large teams more flexibility. Developers can access a wide range of tools using whatever programming language or database they need. The confines of traditional app development are completely removed.
When implemented successfully, microservices also offer enterprises better scalability and agility than monolithic applications. Developers can scale each segmented service according to the business’s needs rather than trying to scale an entire application at once. Additionally, if something goes wrong, microservices make it easy to contain the problem without disrupting the whole application.
DevSecOps
Security is becoming another rising concern in the DevOps sector, and it’s easy to understand why. As cloud computing becomes more readily accessible, new security threats seem to be around every corner. That’s why DevSecOps is becoming a bigger part of many companies’ org charts.
With a majority of employees working from home this past year, and many potentially into the future, organizations are beginning to realize that having a secure software supply chain is no longer an option — it’s a necessity. And this security cannot simply be added on as an afterthought. Rather, we must inject security into every layer as secure code, ensuring that any vulnerabilities are quickly detected and mitigated.
DevOps engineers must adapt and change the way they are writing software, ensuring that it is secure not only as it is written, but as it is deployed, as well. Some ways to begin prioritizing security for DevOps include:
- Understanding security goals
- Having proper cloud vulnerability scanners
- Securing code with standard tests
With a DevSecOps model, experts in these teams work closely to automate manual and tedious processes. The technology stack and tooling help them operate and automate applications swiftly and securely. This also helps engineers to carry out certain tasks all by themselves that normally would have called for assistance from other teams — like deploying code or provisioning infrastructure.
Effective Automation
As user demands change, every tool has to evolve in order to serve the new needs and wants; the same is the case with DevOps. The tool is in a continuous evolution phase; each phase brings in a new set of updates. This means that developers have to constantly learn and master the art of multitasking. However, there is a way to reduce this load — presenting the power of automation. Automating tedious tasks can help developers expend their expertise only on tasks that truly demand undivided attention. This can help them concentrate on tricky tasks rather than tedious ones.
In a world that is going to see a fast-paced future, automation is the only key to serving the ever-changing needs of users — all at a rapid rate. Moreover, today’s complex and hyper-interactive applications cannot solely rely on the efficiency of manual testing, they demand the precision that can only be achieved by test automation tools. In the coming years, automation is set to play a major role in enabling businesses to make the most of cloud technology.
Managing Multi-Cloud Environments
Here, the first question that comes to mind is — when working with a single cloud platform seems tricky, why make things more complicated by adopting multiple ones? Here’s why — making use of multiple cloud environments can help developers build applications faster with the help of advanced tools. These platforms can also bring enviable features like disaster recovery and easy data migration. The best advantage is realized while working on time-critical applications; in case one platform runs into technical difficulties like an unwarranted outage, you can count on the other for timely delivery.
With more and more organizations indulging in the cloud, the processes are now becoming more complex. As such, DevOps is bound to become the go-to tool for weaving the different development processes. Software in the near future is going to exist on multiple clouds, meaning that holistic tools like DevOps will soon become the need of the hour. In addition, it will have to keep adapting in accordance with the changing technologies to make sure that the cloud platforms are leveraged to their full potential.
More Companies Adopt DevOps Culture
DevOps continues to grow as an interest to a wider variety of organizations. A few leaders have lots of success at building and evolving their software, but a large number of people that have adopted DevOps tooling still struggle with cultural change. I think that the next year or two will see many of these organizations either mature to change their culture and do more than just adopt tooling, or they will fall back into more siloed work in groups, with a lack of collaboration. I already see that in some clients that expected the tooling to change their culture automatically.
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The future looks bright when it comes to DevOps. In this article, I’ve compiled some predictions for 2022 DevOps trends. We will also see an increase in demand for DevOps skills, DevOps tools to automate more DevOps processes, and DevOps talent acquisition & retention challenges. With new generations emerging that are skilled in DevOps, cloud technologies, and agile methodologies, DevOps will still be at the forefront of business development over the coming decades.
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