Adaptavist predicts 2023: top trends in DevOps

As DevOps continued to be an essential part of organisations’ digital strategies in 2022, some of its associated trends intensified as a result. Therefore, a few of our 2023 predictions are an extension of the practices highlighted in last year’s predictions for 2022.

Although you may be familiar with some of our featured trends, don’t be fooled into believing you have 2023 all worked out. DevOps trends are constantly evolving and adapting, and our list, based on new insight for 2023, highlights the key developments that are likely to unfold in the year ahead.  

And we’re not the only ones predicting 2023’s DevOps trends to watch. Recently, our CTO Jon Mort appeared in the press when he shared his thoughts on the subject. In this DevOps Digest article, Mort provides insight into how DevOps and related technologies will evolve and impact businesses in the year ahead.

The continued rise of DevSecOps meant that 2022 demonstrated that security remains of vital consequence. In the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic the world accelerated towards digital-first, with remote and hybrid working becoming the norm, and customer demand for accessing products and services online only grew. As more organisations look to place more importance and investment in security, the demand for DevOps transformation remains at an all-time high.

In fact, as highlighted in our roundtable discussion on the changing landscape of DevSecOps, organisations are facing more security challenges than ever before, and data breaches, scams and ID theft are becoming more frequent. To tackle this, many more organisations looked to shift security left and planted it right at the heart of their software development delivery pipeline.

Additionally, automation of security tasks took centre stage, with many organisations enticed by the ability to identify incoming threats and prioritise alerts as they emerge. All in all, with such high costs, the extension of DevOps automation across business and DevSecOps investments are set to continue as we move through 2023.

APIs or application programming interfaces make it possible for different applications of different origins to interact with each other. They provide huge benefits, including the opportunity to increase revenue for business and expand customer reach. As more businesses catch on to the benefits of APIs, we expect their use to increase in 2023.

And finally, Kubernetes maintains its position as the reigning choice when it comes to creating a fully automatic workflow. Its ability to change cloud-based apps with container-centric Microservices makes it the best candidate for leading software providers. Our CTO Jon Mort spoke at length to Container Journal about how Kubernetes can help organisations. Looking ahead, we expect the use of Kubernetes to continue to increase in 2023 as more businesses adopt this effective container orchestration system.

It's useful to reflect on the year that’s just been, but what’s next for DevOps? Let’s find out.

Continuing to embrace everything as code

In last year’s predictions, we spoke about embracing everything as code (EaC). EaC is an approach that centres around codifying all aspects of software development, delivery, and management, and it’s an effective, scalable and repeatable system. As tool vendors continue to embrace it, we think its popularity will endeavour in 2023. A code-based approach gets more done in less time, which has also driven high demand for infrastructure as code (IaC).

As more companies embrace DevOps, more are encountering the hard governance problems of automation. Many teams that implement IaC quickly find that they need better policy enforcement. That’s where policy as code (PaC) comes in. PaC defines and manages security rules, criteria and conditions through code. You can use them to enforce architectural standards, corporate policies, regulatory requirements, and more. Along with continuing to embrace EaC and IaC, we predict that the adoption of PaC will grow as more organisations attempt to combat automation hurdles.

The rise of Value Stream Management

As more companies seek to align around the creation of customer value, Value Stream Management (VSM) is a critical step for many software organisations in their value optimisation journey. And as organisations scale their DevOps practices, high-level metrics that assess performance and efficiency product delivery is essential. VSM provides product teams with end-to-end visibility and insight into the flow of work, helping them address constraints and improve delivery. And so, in 2023, we predict that organisations will prioritise VSM with the continued adoption of new solution providers who offer dynamic VSM platforms, such as our partner Plandek.

The adoption of new technologies and increased speed in application delivery has driven a demand for IT operations professionals with updated skills and knowledge. The practice of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) is increasingly central to IT operations. Increased demand for scalable and reliable software systems will further drive SRE necessity. As a result, investments in SRE will increase in 2023.

There’s been a buzz around Minimum Viable Architecture (MVA) for a while now, and we think 2023 will be the year it steps into the spotlight. With an increase in democratisation and therefore collaborative decision-making distributed across fusion teams, there’s a call for a shared architecture that is composable, consistent, and reusable. MVA provides that shared architecture. Its ability to help organisations transform quickly and support experimental innovation methods means we expect to see more organisations embrace this shared architecture in 2023.

Platform engineering is an efficient way to help organisations leverage their cloud platform. Toolchains and workflows created as part of the process provide organisations with a self-service solution, reducing the cognitive load on developers. Platform Engineers build or adopt Internal Developer Platforms (or IDPs) to cover the operational aspects of an application’s life cycle. IDPs drive the success of platform engineering because they enable developers to implement application infrastructure without depending on the operations team. Ultimately, this helps organisations deliver software faster. Recently, there has been a rise in interest and adoption of platform engineering, and we think its popularity will intensify in 2023.

We’ve seen a shift away from DevOps being a “nice to have” addition to playing an essential role in business development. As more organisations adopt DevOps in their strategy to become a digital-first business, Adaptavist can help with your digital transformation. Through partnerships with leading technology providers, a consultancy-led approach and market-leading apps, we provide complete DevOps solutions to help you deliver better software, faster.