Integration is a key challenge in the DevOps space
DevOps adoption is growing rapidly, bolstered by the coronavirus pandemic and rapid business changes it required. Organisations who refuse to embrace the change will find that they are swiftly becoming uncompetitive and unable to fulfil their customers' future needs. Not all firms are able to quickly and easily transition to DevOps on their own, though - and that is where specialist partners come in.
"DevOps is the secret to catapulting technology to the next level - becoming more agile and truly user-focused. If we want to stop being slaves to technology and make our systems fit-for-purpose, we have to embrace DevOps wholly and completely," says Kumaravel Narayanan, head of integration at Sandhata Technologies - a winner at Computing's DevOps Excellence Awards 2020.
Sandhata was founded in the UK in 2005, and operates as a global DevOps consultancy, specialising in integration and transformation. It won the DevOps Project of the Year award, for the TIL Transformation project it undertook with Vodafone UK. Narayanan was "so pleased" when he heard that the company had won, adding, "It is very rewarding and satisfying to know that a project we delivered has been chosen as an exceptional example of introducing positive change and has made a real difference to the company. The team members who worked in this team all deserve this award, and it is brilliant for each of them to have a tangible way of recognising this achievement."
As recognition of the team's hard work, Narayanan says the award win has helped to boost team morale, and motivate staff to "continue to embrace innovation and cutting-edge technologies to deliver lasting value for our customers."
Click here to view the DevOps Excellence Awards 2021
Integration is a difficult space to work in. Companies and consultancies are often required to manage different versions of technologies, complex and sprawling connectivity and unavailable dependencies. To deliver change in spite of these challenges, Sandhata focuses on optimising processes around the core business needs and cutting whatever isn't vital.
"This outlook is the driving force behind DevOps and why it is so relevant for Integration teams especially," says Narayanan.
The work with Vodafone showed the benefits of this approach. "This TIL Transformation Project team spent a year transforming a very complex application stack, including hundreds of legacy APIs and sprawling configuration, into a future-ready solution with DevOps principles at its heart. This transformation project was delivered without affecting on-going project delivery by introducing lean processes, collaborative tools and automation capabilities in a phased manner."
The TIL project is still ongoing, and Sandhata will continue to work with Vodafone in 2021.
"The next stage on the TIL Transformation journey is to redefine our DevOps framework in a modular way to realise the benefits of plug-and-play architecture, including faster solution delivery at a lower cost. There is lots more to automate and processes to streamline, including focusing on shift left at all stages of the delivery.
"Within Sandhata, we are also building other innovative DevOps solutions, including bringing mainframe kicking and screaming into 2021! Our latest offering, PopUp Mainframe, finally allows mainframe to follow agile and DevOps practices in line with distributed systems, enabling self-service mainframe environments on demand - a capability which has been out of reach for most mainframe organisations until now."
We are now accepting entries for the DevOps Excellence Awards 2021. Click here to find out more.
