“I feel the need … the need for speed!” ~ Maverick

According to a recent report from Chef, one of the driving motivations for companies is based on this Maverick quote from the movie “Top Gun”: The need for speed. Getting better products to market faster is a competitive advantage that gives companies an edge over rivals—and DevOps, microservices and containers provide the fuel to speed things up.

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Which of the following best describes how you currently monitor and manage systems across your hybrid cloud environment?(Required)

Multiple separate tools for different environments

Multiple separate tools for different monitoring and management functions

Single consolidated dashboard

Custom built monitoring and management solution

No full monitoring and management solution

Don’t know

How valuable would it be for your monitoring and management solution to incorporate predictive analytics to help you identify and address system issues that are critical and not waste time or effort working through all the data and “noise” that is not critical?(Required)

Extremely valuable

Moderately valuable

Somewhat valuable

Slightly valuable

Not valuable

How do you most typically address potential system issues BEFORE they impact your operations?(Required)

Automated workflows and playbooks to remediate potential issues as soon as they are detected

An orchestrated response process that leverages automation, AI, and human expertise to rapidly respond to potential issues

Advanced monitoring tools such as predictive analytics and anomaly detection to proactively identify and address potential issues

Respond to issues as they arise, using manual processes and troubleshooting techniques

A combination of automated remediation, orchestrated response, and/or proactive monitoring to address potential system issues

Don’t know

Other

What methods does your organization use to control and monitor cloud/IT spending?(Required)

Centralized procurement processes

Pre-approved budget thresholds

Automated cost monitoring tools

Department-level spending controls

Regular cost audits and reviews

Cloud cost optimization platform

Approval workflows for resource provisioning

Native financial operations tools provided by the cloud provider

No formal controls in place

Don’t know

Other

Please specify:

Which methods do you rely on most to detect security vulnerabilities in your systems?(Required)

Automated scanning tools

Manual assessments

Vendor notifications

Threat modeling (for early detection)

None of these

Don’t know

Other

Please specify:

What are the TWO most common ways you prioritize vulnerabilities to address within your environment?(Required)

Based on potential impact

Based on exploitability

Regulatory compliance requirements

Based on CVSS scores

Risk-based analysis of multiple factors

First-in-first-out approach

No formal prioritization process

Don’t know

How do you typically handle system updates and security patches?(Required)

Automated updates and patches

Manually review and apply updates and patches on a regular schedule

A combination of automation and manual review

Apply updates and patches on an as-needed basis.

Outsourced update and patch management

No defined process

Don’t know

Other

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Chef conducted a survey to gain a better understanding of trends and technology adoption within the Chef customer community. A Chef blog post explains, “In the first few weeks of January we received over 1,500 responses. While that’s a small slice of our user base, we received responses from around the world, across all industry verticals. This varied sample pool allows us to get a pulse on the challenges most directly impacting the Chef community.”

In a nutshell, the Chef survey found that DevOps is having a fundamental impact on the shape and practices of IT organizations. Companies are embracing DevOps, cloud infrastructure, virtualization, microservices and containers—all in an effort to streamline development and deploy faster.

Here are a few of the highlights from the Chef report:

• The majority of teams surveyed are releasing changes to production not monthly, weekly or even daily, but on demand. Likewise, teams overwhelmingly report reducing the time it takes between an initial software commit and running code in production to mere hours from weeks and days.
• Cross-functional teams are 17 percent more likely than application teams to release changes to production on a continuous, on-demand basis. Further, cross-functional teams are 23 percent and 24 percent more likely than infrastructure and security teams, respectively, to release changes to production on demand.
• When a failure occurs in production, the majority of respondents (55 percent) are able to recover in one hour, the shortest possible recovery time in the survey. One-third of respondents (33 percent) are able to recover in the next window of four hours.
• The overwhelming majority (86 percent) of respondents have completed or are in progress of managing a project to migrate infrastructure from physical to virtual.
• Three quarters of all respondents are running cloud-based apps in a public or hybrid cloud and only 25 percent are running them purely in a private cloud.
• More than two-thirds of respondents (67 percent) are already running or plan to run containers in their infrastructure.

Chef sums up with an analysis of the survey results. The report states that building and maintaining a continuous enterprise requires teams to embrace emerging technologies to increase velocity.

Virtualization and automation drive speed. Chef also suggests, however, that teams should embrace the preferred services and tools of developers, and adopt those across other teams. The report also stresses that organizations should strive to integrate security and compliance earlier in the production cycle.

These tidbits only scratch the surface of the report. I recommend that you download the report and read it in full. The bottom line, basically, is that speed provides a competitive edge, and that technologies and practices such as DevOps, virtualization, microservices and containers enable organizations to produce better products faster.

— Tony Bradley