What’s Really Happening with DevOps Processes and Tools in 2021

Earlier this year, we at CloudBolt Software launched Cloud Industry Insights (CII) to provide a regular window into the multi-dimensional thinking of the IT leader in 2021. With hybrid cloud and digital transformation strategies changing so rapidly, it made more sense to check in with global IT leaders more frequently than annually.  

In our first report earlier this year, we took a general overview of how the hybrid cloud and digital transformation landscapes are transforming into a New Cloud Order. It that eschews myopic, monolithic processes and updates them to meet the extensible, holistic, and flexible needs of today.  

In our newest CII report, we take a more granular view of some very specific issues on the minds of enterprise IT leaders in the constantly evolving area of DevOps. We got the opinions of over 200 global IT leaders on topics related to continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) processes and strategies for infrastructure-as-code (IaC), specifically related to HashiCorp’s Terraform. 

The results indicate continued unsettledness around both areas, despite decades of usage and development for CI/CD pipelines and IaC. There’s difficulty for developers and ITOps to find common ground as gaps in critical areas around reliability, interoperability, visibility, testing, governance and more still exist.  

A Quick Glance at the Numbers for CI/CD and Terraform Realities 

We secured over 200 responses from leaders with senior titles (74% VP+) at companies with over 1,000 employees around the world, utilizing Pulse Research’s proprietary platform. Our full findings are in the full report, but here’s a quick summary of what we discovered:  

On the subject of CI/CD:  

• Only 4% of companies consider themselves experts in CI/CD. 
• The time to deploy a single CI/CD pipeline for 69% of companies is days or weeks, as opposed to multiple times a day for just 5%. 
• Only 11% of companies view their CI/CD infrastructure as reliable. 

When it comes to IaC and Terraform: 

• Just 2% of respondents are deploying 75% or more of their infrastructure using Terraform. 
• When it comes to satisfaction with Terraform, 5% of all respondents say they’re “very satisfied.” 
• 8 in 10 respondents said Terraform usage increases the need for custom integrations with other tools and technologies. 

Why It Matters and What Comes Next 

When we speak to IT leaders about hybrid cloud, conversations tend to focus on ITOps. But increasingly, DevOps is growing in importance when it comes to how we talk about hybrid cloud. There are realities and potentially misconceptions on both sides that we wanted to provide a clear picture on as part of this report.  

We invite you to read the full report for free here. Like with all CII materials, you don’t have to fill out a form to access our research, just click the link and you’re there. Over the next few weeks, we’ll dive more deeply here on the specific numbers and what they mean for your journey to realizing the New Cloud Order.   

Plus, we’ve got some more exciting CII research coming your way very soon.  

Learn more about CloudBolt today. Request a demo!