DevOps is a philosophy that combines development with operations and demands a toolchain of technologies that is linked to increasing the change in collaboration. The organisation across the globe have started using DevOps in their business, and the graph is growing gradually. Statistics derive that 65% of the organisation will use DevOps in their business as a mainstream strategy by 2020, indicating a high scope of DevOps in upcoming days. With over 19 years of experience in leading Enterprise Sales, Alliances, Strategy & Planning for core technology & e-commerce companies, Kavita Vishwanath, General Manager, JFrog, gives us her insights about the DevOps being one of the emerging industry sectors in today’s time, in her email interaction with CXO Outlook.
How has DevOps been perceived in India?
Increased complexity in software development due to new technologies such as containerisation, microservices, and others, has brought attention to software delivery processes that were earlier managed without tools. At times DevOps is perceived as just a collection of tools, although they do rely heavily on them, it is more than that. The main principles of DevOps are collaboration, continuous testing and improvement, self-service, iteration and automation. It ensures quick deployment by focusing on automation and the right tools. In today’s ‘app world’ to meet the ever-changing demands of the customer, it becomes super important for businesses to look at continuous, secure and seamless delivery of software using DevOps tools. India is at the forefront of this adoption. From leading private banks to e-commerce, we see customers across the spectrum adopting DevOps and demanding more in terms of sophisticated tools that help them manage their DevOps processes end to end.
Could you please elaborate on the scope and demand for DevOps?
With multiple dev teams working on products using different tools, it is important that as a developer, you have freedom of choice to pick the right tool and technology. At the same time, as an organisation, the delivery of the software is platform-independent. This is where DevOps comes into play. What customers are looking for today is a single product that can support almost all software packages and at the same time provide Security with SecOps by scanning for vulnerabilities and checking for compliance. JFrog does precisely this for all its customers through a single platform. The vast number of tools used by developers and IT makes it difficult for leaders to get a holistic view of how each team is performing. Lack of visibility paired with manual processes slows the behavioural and cultural change needed to succeed with DevOps. We have now seen uptake from organisations as an understanding of DevOps is far better than what it was and have also realised the value DevOps can bring to the table.
How has the COVID-19 Pandemic Outbreak affected the DevOps Sector worldwide?
DevOps has emerged as a common practice for many development companies around the world. The methodology has been picked up very quickly globally; due to the vast scope of innovation, it provides and productivity as well as efficiency. Therefore, any company that has not yet adapted to this approach, is sure to feel the pressure to do so. The pandemic has brought more opportunity than challenges specific to DevOps. The lockdown has severely impacted almost all businesses forcing the tech teams to innovate, reduce costs and push themselves to become more relevant in the changing environment. All these have worked as a trigger for organisations to think about developing and releasing software much faster than before and automate more than ever. DevOps is a very collaborative process involving developers and operations teams to come together, and with remote work kicking in, we are seeing more and more teams relying on tools to make this happen. This will only continue to grow in the future.
How do you plan on growing your company, JFrog, in India?
India is an important R&D centre for JFrog and many of our core products such as CI/CD Pipelines, Installers, Insight etc. are built out of our Bangalore office. Apart from that, India is also a critical support centre that provides end to end support for enterprise customers across APAC and EMEA. While we are scaling rapidly in R&D and Support, we are also adding new India customers each month and looking at expanding our Sales & Business Development team in India.
What are the top trends in the DevOps sector to watch out for?
DevSecOps is echoing in the market. Security has become a concern for everyone, and it’s no different for DevOps teams that carry the burden of securing every release before it goes out. Imagine releasing an update with a security vulnerability or maybe a license compliance issue. All of this fall under SecOps, and this is a growing concern amongst customers. Another big trend to watch out for is a CI, CD tool that offers a consistent and immutable platform to automate everything from code to production.
About Kavita Viswanath
Kavita has over 19 years of experience in leading Enterprise Sales, Alliances, Strategy & Planning for core technology & e-commerce companies. As General Manager for JFrog India, she manages India Business and Operations including R&D, Support, Sales & Marketing, Finance & Operations.
Before joining JFrog, she was associated with Flipkart, where she worked directly with Sachin Bansal on building the B2B business of their Made in India brand Billion and also with Flipkart Ads as the Head of Planning & Strategy. Her most recent stint with them has been leading Global Sales at Myntra, for their AI-based SaaS product.