Despite transient frictional, security and cultural issues during and after DevOps adoption, the report cites the long-term benefits for digitalization.
With Singapore rolling out 5G this year amidst global pandemic turbulence, new aspects of interconnectivity will create unprecedented growth opportunities, says a free study by Puppet.
According to the report, as the new network kicks in, demands for new services and software will increase, thereby creating operational challenges for telecom operators around the world as they seek to respond to the market needs, and this is where DevOps enter the picture.
For telecom companies, DevOps enable continuous delivery which is important to automate the repetitive and labor-intensive IT processes. Automation means shipping new features faster, enabling IT personnel to focus on improving business efficiency and making the software delivery lifecycle more predictable.
In fact, according to the report, the telecom industry has made significant strides in the DevOps evolution journey in just one year, reporting faster and more frequent software deployments within their delivery lifecycles.
However, as the world moves into the next digital era, the pace of technological advancements is moving too fast for security measures to keep up: “Companies in Singapore will need to recognize the importance of integrating security practices into their delivery cycle and deploy on-demand more frequently and remediate vulnerabilities faster. Prioritizing security improvements does not mean it will halt feature delivery. Through the use of continuous delivery practices, it will help telecom companies retrofit quality and security at the end of a development cycle,” said Rachel Lew, Singapore Country Manager, Puppet.
The same report indicated that 41% of telecom operators are embedding a designated security expert in teams while maintaining a centralized security function. The path to security integration, can sometimes be messy, and for the companies in the middle stages of integration, there are increased friction between teams and slower-than-expected delivery—but this is a natural and temporary transition. The industry report suggests key practical measures to move forward and build security practices within software lifecycles:
- Recognize that DevOps is a journey, not a destination: Successful DevOps is all about implementing cultural change; cross collaboration is needed for security to be seen as a shared responsibility between teams.
- Invest in identifying causes of unplanned security issues: Telecom firms were least likely to halt a push to production after finding a critical or high severity security issue. Building quality and security into each stage of the delivery cycle through the use of continuous delivery practices is the key to eliminate vulnerabilities and reduce risks.
- Increase the ability to deploy on-demand: A large percentage of telecom respondents strongly agreed that deployment frequency is limited both by business needs (64%) and their technology and process (60%). By investing in automation, it will help organizations improve security postures at higher quality and more reliable.
The report asserts that successful DevOps practices help telecom companies to automate many of the delivery pipeline, increase speed of delivery and effectively move up the value stack to become an essential provider of digital experiences. While there might be temporary trade-offs between security and the business, the DevOps evolution process is touted to help telecom companies to realize “faster and more frequent deployments that are also higher quality and more secure and reliable in the long run”.
