Understanding Microsoft Azure DevOps

Have you recently migrated to Microsoft Azure? If you have, you should begin using Azure DevOps to build applications and other cloud business solutions. Let’s examine what DevOps is and how it improves your application developments and other IT projects.

Defining DevOps

How do we define DevOps? What does it do, and how does it improve businesses’ cloud solutions? As Microsoft Azure itself puts it: “DevOps enables formerly siloed roles—development, IT operations, quality engineering, and security—to coordinate and collaborate to produce better, more reliable products.” Essentially, DevOps provides the space and the resources for these different roles and departments to collaborate on projects within an Azure cloud development environment. In fact, DevOps’s name is a portmanteau of the words “development” and “operations.”

Overall, DevOps’s design encourages increased collaboration and visibility between teams by connecting them during every phase of the application life cycle. It also automates certain steps in the application development process, so you can schedule shorter release cycles for apps and updates. Additionally, it’s an open platform with a marketplace where you can access all the extensions and resources you need to build and deploy your applications and other IT projects.

Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) Features

CI and CD are critical components of application and cloud solution construction. The Build and Release Azure pipelines in DevOps provide ample space for developers to merge new code in the project’s main code branches during continuous integration. It also offers the space and resources to deploy the project’s newest versions into a production environment during continuous delivery. Additionally, you can deploy the app on your server with very little coding, which reduces the amount of extra work your developers need to put into the project. Overall, the automation in these processes streamlines the collaboration between your teams and shortens the project’s development process.

Configuration Management

As the name implies, this process involves managing your project’s system of resources that make up its configuration. These resources include databases, servers, and virtual machines. DevOps provides the tools you need to make sure your project doesn’t experience configuration drift, which is when the project departs from its ideal design. When you use this DevOps feature, you can roll out changes to your web application or other IT project in a neat, orderly way.

Other DevOps Features

Regardless of whether you’re building cloud solutions for small businesses or enterprises, DevOps has multiple features you should take advantage of. For example, it offers Agile Framework, an Azure platform that’s great for software development. You can also use the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) to improve your systems administration. It also offers GIT and versioning features, so your developers can collaborate easily with each other and then share their results with the other teams. These and other DevOps features improve your project management by encouraging you to build your applications and IT projects in a cloud computing environment. These cloud services allow your business to fully embrace technology and use it to create solutions for your employees and customers.

Overall, DevOps’s design encourages increased collaboration and visibility between teams by connecting them during every phase of the application life cycle. It also automates certain steps in the application development process, so you can schedule shorter release cycles for apps and updates.

DevOps Strategies You Should Adopt

With all the features it offers, DevOps also encourages a culture of continuous learning and increased visibility and alignment between teams. As you build applications and projects in DevOps, track your progress at high and low levels of granularity, and look for places in the application life cycle where your teams can improve. Find ways to maximize productivity by making the most of DevOps’s automated features, such as CI/CD. When you use DevOps, make sure you’re encouraging your teams to align their goals and work together as much as possible.

Get Started in DevOps With Istonish

Are your teams ready to develop apps in a cloud services environment? If they are, reach out to Istonish to begin your migration to Microsoft Azure. We have the knowledge and experience to guide you through the migration process. Then we’ll support you as you and your IT teams begin working in Azure Devops.