Roles Evolve with the Rise of DevOps

The role of systems administrators is evolving, not going away, as servers migrate to the cloud. That role is evolving with the rise of DevOps, the development and operations teams working side-by-side to reduce development time, save money and improve integration, according to a new Dice report.

As Serena Software’s David Hurwitz put it in a guest post:

Instead of throwing applications “over the fence” blindly to operations, a fluid and much more effective DevOps process inserts transparency, efficiency and ownership into the art of developing, releasing and the production use of critical applications. It also binds the two traditionally siloed teams together.

People with DevOps experience are encountering multiple offers, counteroffers and rising salaries, Dice says. (Full disclosure: I write for Dice, too.)

It quotes Murshed Chowdhury, CEO of New York-based staffing company Infusive Solutions, as seeing this as the direction of the future:

Once this transition is solidified (cloud migration), it is likely that the number of open positions for systems admins will decrease. Any of these professionals that can successfully adapt to cloud technologies and virtualization will be the best positioned to thrive in future IT markets.

Robert Stinnett, a data center automation architect with CARFAX, however, told SearchData Center that IT pros are leery of the DevOps combo.

Sometimes IT guys think “Wow, that’s going to water my skills down,” or they do view it as “Hey, I’m the guru here and now we want this to be a team project? Is this going to eliminate me or reduce my position?” Both those questions, I think, deal with false assumptions that people make. …

The whole DevOps thing is bringing all these people together. So before, we worked in silos. We had our development silo, operation silo, Oracle silo and network silo, so we said “Hey, let’s bring all of you guys together.” Now, we still need our network experts; we still need the Oracle experts and the Java experts, but we’re not bringing you together so you all can discuss this and work on it together.

It does not mean that the Java guy is going to do the same job as the lady who does Oracle. What it does mean, however, is that when questions come up or roundtable discussions on how to make a decision, you’re all making decisions with the input of everyone that is going to be impacted. You are not making these decisions in silos anymore. I really think the DevOps movement is great because it brings amazing efficiencies to the whole IT process.