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What is DevOps?

DevOps is a software development methodology that supports the efficient, continuous delivery of innovative, high-performing applications and services.
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DevOps defined

DevOps is a software development methodology that breaks down traditional barriers between development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) teams. It takes advantage of cloud, AI, and other emerging technologies to integrate processes, tools, and practices across the DevOps lifecycle, empowering teams to work together with speed and agility. By embracing a DevOps approach, your organization can improve its operational efficiency while driving continuous innovation.

Key takeaways

  • DevOps breaks down silos, integrating people, tools, and processes to boost collaboration, efficiency, and reliability—enabling faster, higher-quality deployments.
  • Core practices like CI/CD, automation, and agentic AI build agility into every phase, from planning to operations.
  • Powered by cloud and AI, DevOps supports diverse use cases and trends, from platform engineering to sustainable practices, helping organizations stay competitive.

How DevOps works and what sets it apart

Organizations across industries use DevOps to accelerate their software delivery cycles while maintaining system reliability. Evolving since the early 2000s, the DevOps model represents a fundamental shift in how organizations once approached software development.

Development teams, operations engineers, quality assurance professionals, and security specialists traditionally worked in isolated silos. This resulted in numerous inefficiencies, such as when developers "threw code over the wall" to operations engineers.

DevOps eliminates these handoffs by automating processes and fostering collaboration from project conception through production deployment and ongoing maintenance. DevOps also employs feedback loops that improve quality and speed.

The DevOps model continues to evolve with cloud, AI, and other technologies. However, the model also extends beyond tools and processes to encompass shared accountability, continuous learning, and customer-focused outcomes. Together, these unified practices allow organizations to respond rapidly to market demands, reduce time to market for new features, and maintain a competitive advantage in an increasingly digital landscape.

Benefits of DevOps

DevOps can deliver significant advantages, including the following:
 
  • Enhanced collaboration: DevOps promotes transparent communication across teams, which can openly share metrics, challenges, and successes. This visibility enables faster decision-making and eliminates information silos that traditionally slowed software delivery.
  • Increased efficiency: DevOps uses automation to reduce manual work and optimize processes, enhancing overall productivity and delivering a better experience for developers. Through continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) practices, teams benefit from consistent, predictable, and more frequent software releases.
  • Improved quality and security: Ongoing code integration and automated testing significantly reduce software defects, resulting in greater stability and reliability. By embedding security measures into the development process, DevOps teams can proactively detect and resolve issues before the software goes live.
  • Faster time to market: Automation and seamless cross-team collaboration drive higher productivity, helping teams to accelerate the journey from initial idea to product launch. DevOps empowers organizations to quickly respond to shifting market needs and deliver innovative updates to customers with greater speed.

Core practices of the DevOps model

DevOps embraces the following foundational practices that, when applied in unison, drive reliable, repeatable workflows throughout the development lifecycle:

Continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD)

Continuous integration automatically merges code changes into shared repositories, triggering automated builds and tests. Continuous delivery extends this by automatically deploying validated code to staging and production environments. This practice reduces deployment risks while enabling multiple daily releases.

Automation

Streamlining repetitive tasks such as testing, deployment, and monitoring through workflow automation increases productivity, reduces errors, and gives DevOps team more time to focus on strategic activities. Also, automation of security-focused processes helps teams efficiently protect software against vulnerabilities.

Cross-team collaboration

DevOps fundamentally changes how teams across disciplines approach software development and operations. Rather than viewing them as separate entities with conflicting priorities, DevOps fosters a culture around shared objectives and mutual accountability for customer success. By valuing teamwork and open communication, DevOps allows teams to more quickly respond to changes and issues.

Version control

Centralized version control systems automatically track every code change, configuration update, and infrastructure modification. Teams maintain complete visibility into who changed what, when, and why—essential for debugging, compliance, and collaborative development.

Situational awareness

Teams continuously observe, comprehend, and anticipate what’s happening in the DevOps pipeline. This practice goes beyond simple monitoring to allow teams to identify issues in real time and proactively resolve them.

Infrastructure as code (IaC)

IaC treats infrastructure provisioning like software development, using code to define servers, networks, and cloud resources. This practice supports CI/CD pipelines and enables consistent, repeatable infrastructure deployments across development, staging, and production environments. It also enables rapid scaling and disaster recovery.

Microservices

A microservice architecture supports the efficient development, deployment, and scaling of innovative, cloud-based services. Teams can work independently on small, specific services before connecting them through APIs into a larger solution. Increasingly packaged using containers, microservices allow for greater flexibility, innovation, and resilience in DevOps workflows.

DevSecOps

DevSecOps—short for development, security, and operations—has become a standard DevOps practice. Automated security tools identify vulnerabilities embedded throughout the development lifecycle. Also, Zero Trust architectures and continuous compliance monitoring help organizations maintain a strong security posture while preserving development velocity.

Configuration management

Automated configuration management maintains consistent system states across all environments. Rather than manual server setup, teams use code-driven tools to deploy, configure, and maintain infrastructure components reliably.

Continuous monitoring

Real-time monitoring and observability provide insights into application performance, user experience, and system health. Proactive monitoring enables teams to identify and resolve issues before they impact customers, supporting the high-velocity deployment cycles that define successful DevOps implementation.

AI in DevOps

DevOps uses machine learning, generative AI, and other AI technologies to empower teams at every phase of the lifecycle. For example, AI in DevOps streamlines planning through more informed decision-making, speeds code development with AI-powered suggestions, and boosts CI/CD through predictive analytics. Agentic DevOps, where autonomous agents work alongside or on behalf of humans to perform a string of tasks, represents a new chapter in the evolution of DevOps.

How DevOps influences the application lifecycle

DevOps views the application lifecycle as a continuous cycle rather than a linear process. This holistic approach ensures seamless transitions between phases while maintaining quality and velocity. Here are the key four phases:

Plan

DevOps teams ideate, define, and describe solution features and capabilities. They use AI-enhanced, scrum-ready tools to create backlogs, track issues, and keep projects on schedule. They can also follow progress at varying levels—from single-product tasks to tasks that span portfolios of multiple products.

Develop

Development focuses on writing, reviewing, and testing code within collaborative, AI-assisted environments. Teams use shared repositories, automated testing frameworks, and peer review processes. An emphasis on small, frequent iterations enables rapid feedback and reduces complexity while maintaining code quality.

Deliver

Delivery entails pushing software to a live environment where it’s accessible to customers and other users. Teams use automated CI/CD pipelines to optimize building, testing, and packaging, and automated deployment tools to streamline environment provisioning and configuration.

Operate

Operations teams monitor, maintain, and optimize solutions in production environments. They maintain security, compliance, and cost efficiency by relying on AI agents and other AI tools to automate scaling, performance tracking, and incident response procedures. This generates valuable feedback that informs planning for subsequent DevOps cycles, creating a continuous improvement loop.

How cloud computing enhances DevOps

DevOps uses cloud computing to increase cost efficiencies, improve performance and scalability, strengthen security, and simplify compliance. Here are a few ways that cloud computing delivers these and other benefits:

Cloud agility

Cloud computing allows DevOps teams to access servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence as services over the internet. They can create cloud computing infrastructure in minutes, then shut it down when it’s no longer needed. Able to quickly provision and configure multi-region cloud environments offering unlimited resources, DevOps teams can more easily adopt cloud-based delivery models like software as a service.

Kubernetes

Kubernetes is open-source orchestration software for deploying, managing, and scaling containerized apps. Using Kubernetes, DevOps teams can automatically build and deploy containers through CI/CD pipelines and monitor containers in production.

Serverless computing

Serverless computing eliminates the need for DevOps teams to provision, scale, and manage the infrastructure on which their apps and services run. Instead, cloud service providers perform these tasks, reducing overhead costs and giving developers more time to build innovative solutions.

DevOps across industries

Here are some examples of how organizations use DevOps practices and tools to meet industry-specific and cross-industry challenges:

Financial services modernization

Banking institutions can accelerate mobile banking rollouts by using CI/CD pipelines and automated testing, cutting deployment time from weeks to hours. Automated audit trails and role-based access controls help ensure compliance with financial regulations.

E-commerce platform scaling

Fast-growing online retailers can use IaC and automated scaling to handle traffic surges. Resources will adjust automatically to demand, and updates will deploy simultaneously across regions—speeding time to market while maintaining stability during peak periods.

Healthcare technology integration

Healthcare providers can integrate multiple legacy systems while ensuring HIPAA compliance and zero downtime. Automated workflows and continuous monitoring reduce integration time, strengthen audits, and uphold reliability.

Internet of Things (IoT) implementation

Manufacturers can centralize cloud and edge deployments with unified DevOps workflows, ensuring production continuity and enabling rapid feature delivery to thousands of connected devices.

Kubernetes cluster management with agentic DevOps

Organizations can adopt AI agents to automate Kubernetes management—restarting pods, summarizing logs, scaling deployments, and estimating costs. For instance, a telecom company could use this approach to speed network service deployments and adapt resources to fluctuating demand.

Prioritized security in insurance

Large insurers can build modern DevSecOps environments that integrate AI and cloud tools into development workflows. This helps teams follow security best practices, address supply chain vulnerabilities quickly, and use policy automation for real-time visibility into the organization’s security posture.

Which tools are essential to DevOps?

Your organization should build its own unique DevOps toolchain—a collection of tools that boosts the efficiency, reliability, and security of the entire development lifecycle. Understanding the four key categories of tools can help you make strategic decisions about your technology investments.
 
  • CI/CD tools automate the integration and deployment of code changes. By reducing manual intervention, these tools accelerate the release cycle and help teams deliver updates more efficiently.
  • Workflow automation tools streamline tasks such as infrastructure provisioning, configuration management, and application deployment. Using predefined scripts and configurations, they enhance consistency and accuracy throughout the development process.
  • Version and source control tools manage code changes over time. They track every modification, making it easier to revert to previous versions when necessary and ensuring a clear history of development activities.
  • Security tools help protect apps and data by continuously monitoring and testing code for vulnerabilities. They also manage credentials (known as secrets) and enforce compliance with security standards.

The future of DevOps

The future of DevOps lies in creating more intelligent, sustainable, and human-centered development practices that balance technological advancement with organizational effectiveness. Here are some key trends to follow:

Agentic DevOps

Integration of AI agents into every phase of the DevOps lifecycle, from ideation to deployment, is fundamentally reshaping how DevOps teams work. Unlike simple code assistants, agents autonomously handle tasks such as prototyping, debugging, and monitoring, freeing developers to focus on innovation.

Platform engineering

Organizations are increasingly establishing dedicated platform engineering teams that standardize and simplify DevOps toolchains, workflows, and environments. These teams create self-service infrastructure platforms that hide underlying complexities so that developers can be more productive and speed time to value.

Sustainable practices

Growing environmental awareness will continue to drive DevOps practices that optimize resource utilization and reduce carbon footprint. For example, carbon-aware computing initiatives at Microsoft demonstrate how cloud providers can measure and optimize energy consumption across their development and deployment infrastructure.

Conclusion

DevOps is defined as a software development methodology that integrates processes, tools, and practices across the DevOps lifecycle, empowering teams to work together with speed and agility. By embracing this approach, your organization can efficiently and continuously deliver cutting-edge, high-performing applications and services.
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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

  • DevOps is a collaborative approach that unifies software development and IT operations teams to deliver apps and services faster and more reliably. By combining people, processes, and technology, organizations achieve continuous delivery of high-quality software.
  • The primary purpose of DevOps is to accelerate software delivery while maintaining quality and reliability. This approach enables organizations to respond rapidly to market demands, reduce deployment risks, and improve customer satisfaction.
  • DevOps involves coding but extends far beyond traditional programming. Many DevOps practices focus on communication, monitoring, and workflow optimization rather than writing application code.
  • DevOps professionals need diverse technical and soft skills including cloud platforms, automation tools, scripting languages, and CI/CD systems. Equally important are collaboration, communication, and problem-solving abilities that enable cross-functional teamwork.