When traditional software development was pushed aside for DevOps, industries were all praises for a system that combined development and operations to create a range of multi-functional skills.
In 2011, Mike Gualtieri, VP, Forrester Research, was quoted saying that NoOps would mean an improved application deployment process without needing the developers to speak with an operations professional ever. NoOps, then, emerged as the new warrior on the battlefields, one that was supposedly better than DevOps.
Today, whether NoOps is slowly pushing DevOps into darkness or whether the latter is still strong enough to fight back continues to be a flaming subject for debate. While many nod to the death of DevOps at the hands of NoOps, that may not be the case as per several industry experts.
DevOps Is Far from Dying; It’s Evolving
Spike Morelli, a Stanford based educator, believes that the NoOps versus DevOps debate doesn’t exist. As per Morelli, it’s a matter of using different terminology while trying to arrive at the same goal.
If you pay attention, you’ll discover that the first NoOps solutions and the practises and techniques used in it were a part of the scene long before DevOps was officially a thing. And yet, over 80% of enterprises and around 70% small businesses are currently adopting DevOps. The investment in the technique is heavier than ever at present.
Then, you may have noticed that the DevOps patterns are derived from three principles.
Flow: features move from left to right in the CI pipeline
Fast Feedback: feature feedback moves from right to left in the pipeline
Adaptation: the continuous learning and improvement of the system
NoOps happens to fit entirely within these three DevOps principles.
It removes friction, hence allowing the valuable features to flow through the pipeline uninterrupted
It lets developers ship defects at the same speed as features and ensures that flaws are caught at every stage of the pipeline
It is known for its methods that promote improvement via learning to ensure frictionless software deployment
The NoOps Versus DevOps Culture & Innovating the Latter Using the Former
By definition, NoOps relies entirely on the product developers. The existence of public clouds and the absence of interfering operation teams makes NoOps a tool for producing better software.
Feidhlim O’Neill, Group Head, TechOps and Platform, Wonga, London, stresses that a successful product deployment is the result of clearly defined responsibilities for automation, development, and TechOps departments. His argument- while creating areas of exclusive focus may end up defeating the purpose, losing all areas of focus would be of no use either.
So, while NoOps is only achievable through specialised software, it can exist within DevOps, following its predefined principles. Now, if you consider this:
NoOps can only result in applications that are capable of fitting into existing PaaS solutions
Organisations with monolithic legacy applications would require complete rewrites or massive upgrades to function in a PaaS environment
New technologies will emerge which would have no NoOps solution
Conclusion: While it is possible that NoOps will be called the next DevOps stage, the former is nowhere near killing the latter. Naturally, since DevOps principles and techniques are the only things that can help NoOps get over its limitations and scale to new products.
Keywords: devops culture, DevOps industries, NoOps versus DevOps, NoOps solutions, DevOps patterns, DevOps principles, NoOps definition
