DEVOPSdigest

Industry experts offer thoughtful, insightful, and often controversial predictions on how DevOps and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2022. Part 5 covers automation.

Start with: 2022 DevOps Predictions - Part 1

Start with: 2022 DevOps Predictions - Part 2

Start with: 2022 DevOps Predictions - Part 3

Start with: 2022 DevOps Predictions - Part 4

NEED FOR AUTOMATION

The need for infrastructure automation is going to only increase in 2022. With more organizations trying to run more workloads across an increasingly complex infrastructure estate that straddles both a large data center presence as well as multiple public clouds, automation at all levels is necessary to do this at any scale. As more and more players enter the Infrastructure as Code and Policy as Code space, we see the market and the solutions changing to address both the growing complexity as well as the evolving needs of organizations.
Abby Kearns
CTO, Puppet

Based on the accelerated speed at which organizations are operating, the need for automation will continue to increase, specifically to serve the employee needs of any process. Combined with labor shortages, the requirement for teams to do more with less will be ongoing, heightening the necessity for human-centric development automation in 2022. A key component to consider will be the demand for tech that is built specifically for human consumption, resulting in human-machine interactions that add value and feel authentic.
Zoe Clelland
VP of Product and Experience, Nintex

SIMPLIFYING AUTOMATION

I see a huge push to simplify these automation approaches, (think a low code/no code approach to DevOps) as more organizations struggle to find the right talent with experience in DevOps and automation, they are looking at tools and technologies to help bridge the skills gap. Product companies are going to continue to iterate on their user experience and identify ways to further democratize access to that technology — making it easier to get started on their automation journey as well as run larger and larger environments in more efficient ways.
Abby Kearns
CTO, Puppet

FROM AUTOMATION TO INSIGHTS

The center of gravity for DevOps will start moving from automation to insights. While there will be some tool consolidation, overall tool sprawl in DevOps would continue to increase especially with individual product teams optimizing for their own unique needs. This will exacerbate the need for a management layer to generate insights across of various tools and teams. Engineering and Product leaders will need such management platforms to understand ROI of their investments, delivery bottlenecks, identify high performing teams, and more.
Anand Ahire
Senior Director, Product Management, DevOps, ServiceNow

AI/ML AND AUTOMATION

AI and machine learning will begin playing major roles in development automation in 2022. Specifically, they'll be used to take on tasks that traditionally kept developers busy. Spotting trends in operational data and adjusting course — be it through server availability monitoring, or spotting user patterns in a web application, previously took many developer hours. Just as DevOps processes tighten feedback loops, deploying AI and ML technology can facilitate better and faster decisions as a result of better judgments based on less human subjectivity.
Matt Saunders
Head of DevOps, Adaptavist

SMART AUTOMATION

The last few years organizations have spent time automating their CICD pipelines. They face a "What now" moment. In 2022 and beyond, the paradigm shift will be from automation to "smart automation" — embracing data, ML to find right opportunities to optimize development, deployment practices from the data exhaust from the delivery pipeline.
Harpreet Singh
Co-CEO & Co-Founder, Launchable

CI/CD BECOMES REQUIREMENT

CI/CD will stabilize and standardize to become an IT team requirement. The Bill Gates memo in 2001 became the industry standard in how to design, develop and deliver complex software systems — aand today it feels like there has been no standard since then. IT teams and developers fell into habits of adopting "known" technology systems, and not standardizing in new spaces, like continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD). In 2022, we're going to see a shift towards more stability and standardization for CI/CD. IT leaders have an opportunity to capitalize on this high-growth and high-valuation market to increase deployment activity and solve the "day two operations problem.
Danny Allan
CTO, Veeam

Go to: 2022 DevOps Predictions - Part 6, covering integration.