Deploying software has always been manual and labor-intensive. That’s fading into the past as continuous innovation has become a competitive differentiator for companies of all stages and sizes across every industry.

DevOps has become a hot investment market in recent years. The mega-rounds we’ve been seeing show the massive demand for tools that enable optimal runtime. Moreover, IT leaders are ready to spend to promote the DevOps culture.

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Which of the following best describes how you currently monitor and manage systems across your hybrid cloud environment?(Required)

Multiple separate tools for different environments

Multiple separate tools for different monitoring and management functions

Single consolidated dashboard

Custom built monitoring and management solution

No full monitoring and management solution

Don’t know

How valuable would it be for your monitoring and management solution to incorporate predictive analytics to help you identify and address system issues that are critical and not waste time or effort working through all the data and “noise” that is not critical?(Required)

Extremely valuable

Moderately valuable

Somewhat valuable

Slightly valuable

Not valuable

How do you most typically address potential system issues BEFORE they impact your operations?(Required)

Automated workflows and playbooks to remediate potential issues as soon as they are detected

An orchestrated response process that leverages automation, AI, and human expertise to rapidly respond to potential issues

Advanced monitoring tools such as predictive analytics and anomaly detection to proactively identify and address potential issues

Respond to issues as they arise, using manual processes and troubleshooting techniques

A combination of automated remediation, orchestrated response, and/or proactive monitoring to address potential system issues

Don’t know

Other

What methods does your organization use to control and monitor cloud/IT spending?(Required)

Centralized procurement processes

Pre-approved budget thresholds

Automated cost monitoring tools

Department-level spending controls

Regular cost audits and reviews

Cloud cost optimization platform

Approval workflows for resource provisioning

Native financial operations tools provided by the cloud provider

No formal controls in place

Don’t know

Other

Please specify:

Which methods do you rely on most to detect security vulnerabilities in your systems?(Required)

Automated scanning tools

Manual assessments

Vendor notifications

Threat modeling (for early detection)

None of these

Don’t know

Other

Please specify:

What are the TWO most common ways you prioritize vulnerabilities to address within your environment?(Required)

Based on potential impact

Based on exploitability

Regulatory compliance requirements

Based on CVSS scores

Risk-based analysis of multiple factors

First-in-first-out approach

No formal prioritization process

Don’t know

How do you typically handle system updates and security patches?(Required)

Automated updates and patches

Manually review and apply updates and patches on a regular schedule

A combination of automation and manual review

Apply updates and patches on an as-needed basis.

Outsourced update and patch management

No defined process

Don’t know

Other

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Companies increasingly are turning to DevOps processes and tools to automate the development life cycle and position themselves to adapt and scale nimbly. But for some companies, the idea of completely overhauling their IT operations processes can seem daunting—they don’t know where to begin. The thing is, adopting DevOps is actually quite simple.

Examining the Stack

Developers should bake in automation and agile development from the beginning. The good news, though, is that a defined set of tools to automate each step of the deployment process has emerged. Here’s a breakdown of the new DevOps stack, layer by layer:

Source Code Repository: Let’s start from the bottom of the stack—from the moment you write the first line of code. Before the open-source movement took off and the cloud enabled easy sharing, developers had to work much more slowly to ensure that the necessary improvements were inserted in the right version of a product. Companies such as GitHub, Atlassian and GitLab provide source-code repositories that facilitate collaboration. Now, engineers can work on the same projects at the same time from halfway around the world without worrying about duplicating efforts.

Continuous Integration: Newer tools such as CircleCI and TravisCI, as well as older tools such as those offered by Jenkins, automate testing and integration and provide repeatability in the deployment process. Using these tools, developers are able to test their code for failures and bugs as they write it so the code can be fixed before users ever experience the bugs. CI tools give developers something they desperately need to succeed in today’s competitive marketplace: timely feedback. By spending less time waiting on feedback for new code, engineers can resolve software bugs before they grow into full-scale crises.

Binary Repository: Jfrog and Sonatype provide an end-to-end solution for storing and managing binary artifacts. The binary repository is the system of record closest to the production runtime environment. When something goes wrong, a binary repository such as Artifactory is the first port of call for operations teams. In addition, these tools scan for security vulnerabilities and make it easy to seamlessly distribute software to every corner of the globe.

Continuous Development: Companies including Chef, Puppet and Ansible automate the next phase of taking data into production. The holy grail for software developers is zero downtime; continuous development tools allow developers to update software while everything remains up and running. These tools also streamline the delivery process by automatically configuring servers and ensuring repeatability of the deployment process.

Production Environment: Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are in a war over runtime market share in the public cloud. Behind the firewall, Mesosphere, Kubernetes and Docker are trying to dominate the orchestration layers of enterprise private clouds. Customers want the agility and automation that comes from a cohesive DevOps stack but are refusing to be locked into a single vendor at any level. Whichever stack emerges as the default DevOps stack will have to ensure compatibility across public and private clouds.

About the Author / Andy Vitus

Andy Vitus is a Partner at Scale Venture Partners. He has been investing with Scale for over 12 years and focuses on next-generation enterprise software and new data center technologies, including virtualization and cloud computing. Andy sits on the boards of Arena, Crittercism, DataStax, JFrog, PubNub, Realm Stormpath and Treasure Data. Connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter.