DevOps stems from the strive to make software development better and faster. The practice of DevOps unites development and operations teams and improves collaboration between them, with the help of different software tools.
What Is DevOps?
DevOps is a bunch of practices that strive to bring software development (Dev) together with software operations (Ops). DevOps is also defined by the high level of automation and monitoring at all stages of the development process.
The software development lifecycle becomes continuous – from planning, coding, building, and testing to deploying and monitoring.
DevOps includes different daily practices, like continuous development, communication and collaboration, continuous integration, continuous delivery, continuous deployment, microservices, and continuous monitoring.
What Is a DevOps Toolset?
The plethora of tools used for DevOps is called the DevOps toolset. There are different tools that teams usually use for the different DevOps practices.
For example:
- GitHub - Continuous development
- Jira - Continuous development, Communication and Collaboration
- Azure DevOps - Continuous development, Communication, and Collaboration
- Jenkins - Continuous integration, Continuous delivery, Continuous deployment
- Circle CI - Continuous integration, Continuous deployment
- Kubernetes - Continuous Delivery, Microservices
- Prometheus – Microservices, Continuous monitoring
- Splunk - Continuous monitoring
- Dynatrace - Continuous monitoring
These software tools are usually leveraged in combination with each other, and different DevOps, IT, and service desk teams need to use them daily.
What Are the Benefits of Integrating Your DevOps Tools?
What happens when all these tools are scattered and do not work in sync? Engineers need to transfer data manually from one tool to another. Repetitive manual tasks lead to delays, faulty data, and errors.
Important details might be omitted, feedback and action points are not clear, and the overall work process becomes slower and less efficient.
Integrations between the multiple tools that are part of the DevOps toolset, on the other hand, bring numerous benefits like:
- Deploying more frequently and with higher success
- Fixing bugs earlier and faster
- Feedback is received in real-time and product quality is improved
- Faster time-to-market
- Boosted customer satisfaction
- Higher productivity and efficiency levels
- Improved communication and cross-team collaboration
- Eliminating errors and delays caused by manual transfer of data
- Streamlined development process
The practices of continuous testing and integration, combined with an integrated DevOps toolset, make changes small and reversible, collaboration easier, and feedback instant. This streamlines problem-solving and makes it easier to deploy.
DevOps tools integration significantly shortens the time from idea to production and brings lots of competitive advantages.
What Are the Challenges of Integrating the DevOps Tools?
There are numerous integration solutions, including various add-ons and connectors that make integrations between the DevOps tools. However, many of these integrations are perfunctory and do not meet some basic criteria. Add-ons and apps that connect different software tools often cannot bear complex use cases and specific requirements.
Internal integrations, on the other hand, usually take more time and resources than expected and are difficult to predict.
Of course, there are also integration platforms that are more sophisticated and allow precise filtering and mapping to fit the requirements and integration scenarios of each organization.
Here is what to look for, when choosing an integration tool for your DevOps toolset.
- Scalability – Once you set and launch your integration, this does not mean it is set in stone. Most probably the needs of your organization and teams will grow or change with time. The integration tool needs to be able to accommodate the changes.
- Security – Security is one of the most important things nowadays. Have a thorough check of the security capabilities of the integration tool before you go for it.
- Ease of use – How easy it is to control and manage your integrations? Does it require a developer or another type of expert to be dedicated to the integration management?
- Time to launch – How long will it take before your integration is ready and starts working? With some tools, it might take months, and with others, several weeks. Consider your terms.
- Can it handle your use case? – Some integration tools can be very easy and fast to set up, but they cannot handle specific requirements. Check if the tool can handle your precise scenario.
- Support – Will you receive adequate and timely support in case you need it?
- Is it a plugin – If the integration tool is a plugin, it usually requires changes and specific settings inside your DevOps toolset. This might affect performance, security, updates, etc. If the integration tool is a standalone one, it will not require any changes within your software tools.
- Complex integrations – Connecting more than 2 tools – is the integration tool capable of integrating your whole DevOps toolset?
It is not easy to find the perfect integration tool, but it pays off. If you want to reap all the benefits of integrating your DevOps toolset, you need to invest some time in choosing the best integration method.
How Do We Bring the DevOps Toolset Together?
Automation is the basis for creating a DevOps culture. Many experts claim that DevOps is a bunch of practices. However, these practices cannot exist without the tools DevOps teams are using daily.
There are numerous tools that help design, build, test, manage, monitor, and deploy software. Unfortunately, these tools are usually brought by different vendors and don’t work very well together.
In these cases, the way to synchronize the DevOps toolset is by a seamless integration, through the right integration solution. For example, one team can use Jira for planning and tracking tasks, and another team can use Azure DevOps to manage projects and workflows.
On the other hand, they might use Kubernetes for individual development environments, Jenkins for continuous integration, GitHub to track code versions, etc.
To achieve full coordination in your DevOps toolset, you would need multiple integrations. A good integration tool can connect all these systems and have them transfer the desired data between one another in real time.
Integration eliminates the need for teams to learn new tools all the time, log in to multiple systems, and transfer data manually from one tool to another. This saves a significant amount of time for team members and allows them to focus on important tasks.
Integration of the systems from the DevOps toolset also allows much more stable automation. Of course, the security and stability of the integrations depend on the integration platform you choose.
There are platforms that guarantee high security, protect you in cases of downtime, and have advanced retry mechanisms.
Continuous feedback improves the quality and delivery of software, and this is the main idea of the DevOps culture. Integrating all the systems the DevOps teams are using enables continuous feedback, as everyone gets relevant information in real time.
There are multiple integration methods and platforms, but the best one would be defined from your specific needs and scenario.
Let’s see some examples that illustrate how DevOps is boosted significantly by integrations.
Use Cases and Examples
Let’s say the DevOps team in an organization is using Jira to manage all their tasks and projects. The IT service desk team, on the other hand, is using ServiceNow to handle tickets and requests. The DevOps engineers use GitHub to track versions and code changes.
The service desk team receives a new ticket. They investigate the issue and find out that it is caused by an existing bug. They need to transfer the ticket data to the development team working on the bug.
If ServiceNow and Jira are not integrated, this would need to happen manually, or by communicating the details via phone, chat, or email. This process is prone to errors, incomplete data, and delays.
On the other hand, if there is a Jira ServiceNow integration, the details will automatically be transferred from the ServiceNow ticket to the corresponding Jira task in real time. The developer working on the issue will have the data immediately.
If there is a Jira GitHub integration, new details will also be automatically added from Jira to GitHub and will easily be tracked.
When the integration is bi-directional, the updates in GitHub will be reflected in Jira right away. Once the issue is resolved, this will be logged in ServiceNow and the client will be notified.
Communication and collaboration between team members is one of the most important things in DevOps.
For someone trying to quickly respond to a customer incident, for example, it would be quite challenging to transfer all the details manually between systems and wait for someone to respond, especially if the right person is not available or not online at the moment.
As we can see, with integration in place, we have quick updates to issues, real-time feedback, and questions answered in a timely manner, as the right data reaches the right team members immediately.
With teams working remotely and even in different time zones, collaboration is very difficult without integrating the DevOps tools they are using.
Monitoring and observability are another important part of the DevOps process. With the help of monitoring tools, performance problems, issues, and failures can be identified before they become critical.
Some examples of great monitoring tools used by DevOps teams are Prometheus, Splunk, Nagios, Dynatrace, Datadog, and more. When the monitoring tools are integrated with the other systems the DevOps engineers use, data about any failures is received instantaneously by the right people in the team. This way issues are resolved much faster, and customers are happier.
Let’s imagine the DevOps team in an organization is using Azure DevOps to handle and organize their projects. They are also using CircleCI to build and automate pipelines. Finally, they have Datadog to monitor and track metrics, databases, etc.
If there is an integration between the three tools, pipelines in CircleCI that are related to tasks in Azure DevOps can be automatically updated with any new details. Keeping information in both places helps the DevOps team process the pipelines faster.
On the other hand, the DevOps engineers can receive key CircleCI metrics, like the number of failed builds or the average build time, directly into Datadog. This way, they have everything connected, and the work process is highly optimized.
If the DevOps team in an organization is using Jira, but the team of a partner or a customer is using Azure DevOps, the collaboration between the two teams can be greatly enhanced with integration. A good integration platform can limit the transferred data by different criteria. It can be filtered by user groups, statuses, or even more complex conditions.
This way, even integrating the systems of the company with a third party can be safe and effective.
When the customer has an issue that needs to be resolved, if there is no integration between Jira and Azure DevOps, they need to make calls or send emails. This takes time, and the details provided might be incomplete or even false. The process causes delays and silos.
With an integration in place, the details will be immediately available in the Jira instance of the respective team. They can start working on it right away. The issue will be resolved much faster, making the client happy.
There are various scenarios and examples, and they are unique for each organization. This is why the integration solution used needs to be flexible and scalable, as well as stable and secure. Of course, when choosing an integration tool, you need to keep in mind the specific requirements and situations of your teams and organization.
Conclusion
Cross-team collaboration and good communication are among the most essential parts of DevOps. However, teams and team members nowadays are rarely in the same room. Typically, engineers work remotely and might even be scattered around the globe.
The software tools that they use enable collaboration between them. Effective workflows and smart automation improve customer service and ease the work of developers and IT specialists.
А smooth flow of data between systems and departments will eliminate the need for repetitive manual tasks and logging to multiple systems. When the DevOps tools used daily are integrated with one another, this creates effective workflows, speeds up issue resolutions, and makes the DevOps process smooth and productive.
You can use integration solutions and comprehensive integration platforms to achieve full coordination in your DevOps toolset and get an unprecedented competitive edge.