The disconnect between Development and Operations team is as old as the software technology is. Both, the development and Operations teams speak their own languages. They tend to focus on their own confined areas of technology. Any meeting between the two happens whenever there is a delivery issue. Developers, who have been involved in the actual development of the applications, stay unaware of real time problems. Operations, which are supposed to handle real time users and business demands never intend to know the ‘how stuff works’ part. Result is a knowledge gap between the two.
The Intentional Disconnect
It may sound surprising, but the fact is that much of this disconnect resulted as an intention to solve a different problem. There was an unexplained understanding issue that existed between business and development teams during initial days of software development. The experts tried to bridge this by cultivating business understanding for the developers. This helped to a great extent. Development team started looking into business requirements from users’ perspective and translated those to technical terms. However, as the developers got skilled in business part, they moved farther from Operations understanding. Understanding of servers, networks, load and balancing was out of their concern.
These ignored factors somehow form the most important fundamentals on which Operations team build their activities. The incompatibilities between the applications when run on real time servers grew large. Almost every big software enterprise today faces the issue that ranges between problematic to severe.
An Unbelievable Amount Drained To No Use
When the production is huge, the companies cannot afford the incorrect deliveries and delayed reports due to application incompatibilities. Typically, the businesses spend hundreds of billions of dollars annually in streamlining the applications testing, formulating new plans to ensure quality and scheduling regular meetings between the development and operations teams. Unfortunately, this does not work very well. Since the real time system cannot be replicated in development environment, Quality Assurance has a limited role in controlling the incompatibilities and slow performance of applications in Operations.
Similarly, the regular meetings between the two teams focus more on clarifying their individual problems, rather than understanding each other’s view point. There is no practical way in which the developers will understand the language of loads on servers. The maximum they have done is perfecting their ways in optimizing their own programs. This retains the problem, with a huge cash flow spent to no avail.
DevOps As A Strategy
DevOps as a term brings development and Operations teams together. It is a recent strategy that is upcoming and forming its way into most of the very well known multinational companies in America. The concentration is on forming an AdHoc team that works as a bridge between development and production environments. This requires the individuals with a sound understanding of both environments.
But the experts do not rely solely on human understanding. As soon as the concept came to existence, the research process brought the most recent form of virtualization to solve the problem through business tools. And here is the gift of Service Virtualization that addresses the concern appropriately.
What Is Service Virtualization?
The basis of service virtualization is on simulating the production environment that can be used for testing purposes. The platforms may differ to suit various technologies, while the essence remains same. On a high level, this virtualization can be characterized with following features:
Service Virtualization is a big leap in tackling the concern, which the Organizations have faced for many decades. In future, with more efficient business tools and more optimized ways of deploying the service, almost all the companies are expected to benefit from the approach.
The Intentional Disconnect
It may sound surprising, but the fact is that much of this disconnect resulted as an intention to solve a different problem. There was an unexplained understanding issue that existed between business and development teams during initial days of software development. The experts tried to bridge this by cultivating business understanding for the developers. This helped to a great extent. Development team started looking into business requirements from users’ perspective and translated those to technical terms. However, as the developers got skilled in business part, they moved farther from Operations understanding. Understanding of servers, networks, load and balancing was out of their concern.
These ignored factors somehow form the most important fundamentals on which Operations team build their activities. The incompatibilities between the applications when run on real time servers grew large. Almost every big software enterprise today faces the issue that ranges between problematic to severe.
An Unbelievable Amount Drained To No Use
When the production is huge, the companies cannot afford the incorrect deliveries and delayed reports due to application incompatibilities. Typically, the businesses spend hundreds of billions of dollars annually in streamlining the applications testing, formulating new plans to ensure quality and scheduling regular meetings between the development and operations teams. Unfortunately, this does not work very well. Since the real time system cannot be replicated in development environment, Quality Assurance has a limited role in controlling the incompatibilities and slow performance of applications in Operations.
Similarly, the regular meetings between the two teams focus more on clarifying their individual problems, rather than understanding each other’s view point. There is no practical way in which the developers will understand the language of loads on servers. The maximum they have done is perfecting their ways in optimizing their own programs. This retains the problem, with a huge cash flow spent to no avail.
DevOps As A Strategy
DevOps as a term brings development and Operations teams together. It is a recent strategy that is upcoming and forming its way into most of the very well known multinational companies in America. The concentration is on forming an AdHoc team that works as a bridge between development and production environments. This requires the individuals with a sound understanding of both environments.
But the experts do not rely solely on human understanding. As soon as the concept came to existence, the research process brought the most recent form of virtualization to solve the problem through business tools. And here is the gift of Service Virtualization that addresses the concern appropriately.
What Is Service Virtualization?
The basis of service virtualization is on simulating the production environment that can be used for testing purposes. The platforms may differ to suit various technologies, while the essence remains same. On a high level, this virtualization can be characterized with following features:
- Monitor And Capture The Environment Details:
- Complexity Poses No Issue:
- Resource Understanding:
Service Virtualization is a big leap in tackling the concern, which the Organizations have faced for many decades. In future, with more efficient business tools and more optimized ways of deploying the service, almost all the companies are expected to benefit from the approach.