devops posts - The Wisdom of Clouds

Cloud, 'devops,' and 'shadow IT'

Last week, I attended the Cloud Connect Conference and Expo in Santa Clara, Calif., which is one of the biggest gatherings of cloud thought leaders and practitioners of the year. What I took away from that week was both a firm confirmation of the concepts I have covered in the past, and a surprising revelation of the maturity of some organizations with respect to those practices.

Most notably, there is a growing gap between the culture and practices of organizations that have embraced cloud as a primary IT model, and those that are trying to fit the cloud into their … Read more

IT operations in a cloudy world

Cloud computing and data center virtualization are both changing the way IT operations are organized, and the toolsets sought to automate operations tasks. Recent conversations with a variety of cloud practitioners have reemphasized this for me, and I wanted to lay out what changes I see coming to the operations space, and why those changes are important when considering your future (or your product's future).

A few months ago, I wrote a series of five posts I dubbed the "Big Rethink" series. If you haven't read the series yet, I invite you to do so now. … Read more

Understanding cloud and 'devops'--part 3

The first two parts of this series laid out a case for why cloud computing is driving an applications focus in operations instead of a server focus, and why that applications focus forces a change in the core responsibilities of IT operations personnel, respectively. Those posts triggered a very lively discussion on Twitter and in what I call the "cloud-o-sphere" about the consequences--and limits--of "devops."

I know I promised some examples of devops in action, but that will have to wait until a later post. For now, let me lay out some of the more interesting … Read more

Understanding cloud and 'devops'--part 2

In the first part of this three-part series on cloud computing and the convergence of development and operations known as "devops," I explained how cloud computing is shifting the unit of deployment from the server to the application. This fundamental change in the focus of operations is having a profound effect on the nature of IT operations.

Why? The answer begins with understanding the relationship between applications, services and data (aka "payloads"), and cloud services. The infrastructure and platforms that you find in cloud computing are designed specifically so they can handle as wide a variety … Read more