What's the REAL Impact of DevOps?

Let's start with a level set.  The term "DevOps" is as overused and as misunderstood as the term "Cloud" has been over the past 2-3 years.  Here is how I¹ am defining the term:

Connecting of the Application Development and IT Operations silos/teams via unified automation of processes and policies, ending with codified Platform as a Service (PaaS), inclusive of all necessary infrastructure and platform components.  Example:  Click-button delivery of a "fully baked" LAMP stack for a Java developer to drop jar files,  inclusive of compute, network, storage, app stack, etc..

We hear vendor claims of seemingly incredible (literally) returns in areas of efficiency, utilization optimization, and speed, resulting in huge CapEx gains and even greater OpEx returns.  But how real is this versus just another case of vendor hyperbole?

Quick answer:  It depends.  It depends on willingness of the IT organization to work toward this goal.  It depends on the vendors involved.  It depends on the amount of time and effort it takes to make it do what it's advertized to do.  It depends on how virtualized the environment is already.  and so on. 

However, to provide some realistic ball park return figures, I'll cut right to the chase.  On average, a $3-5B company² who takes a true DevOps approach and implements full PaaS, will see these results³:

• >90% reduction in time to deliver fully-baked IT services
• $3-5M infrastructure cost reduction through right-sizing, reclamation
• $1.5M IT operational costs reduction
• 20% developer productivity improvement (if 200 developers, this is like finding 40 free developers)
• 70-80% drop in cost per VM per month

But those who have accomplished this note that the above results are secondary byproducts of the real areas of return on their investment:

• Market share gains, revenue increase
• Customer satisfaction gains
• IT seen as a business partner to the LOBs, a "competitive advantage"
• Running IT like a true profit/loss business (e.g. transparency into costs, consumption allocation, etc.)
• Ability to say “yes” to all developer requests since it's exponentially faster AND policies are enforced automatically
• Developer creativity increases (when it takes hours rather than weeks to spin up and spin down, many MANY more ideas are flown)
• Greater control, consistency AND greater agility
• And so on

Are these types of results applicable to every company?  Yes, absolutely.  They can apply to ANY and EVERY company.  But, of course, "it depends" on some key assumptions.  Here are a few assumptions that must be considered: 

1. You've partnered with a vendor or partner to walk this path with you.  a.k.a. You've not chosen to be cheap and go it alone because you believe your people are pretty smart (FYI - they are smart, but smart does not equal "familiar" or "been there, done that").
2. This transition has been mandated from the top down.  While the technology and deployment are important, this is mostly an organizational change issue - everyone must play.  And to ensure everyone "plays", Executive Management must mandate.
3. The compute environment is already greater than 50% virtualized.
4. You are able to stand it up fully in less than a few months (note: there are many vendors that CAN do it - or can even offer it for "free" - but if it takes too long or takes too much effort/cost, you've lost your return)
5. You are considering all components of the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) equation over a 3-5 year time horizon:  

TCO =
software cost⁴
+ maintenance cost 
+ services to deploy/customize 
+ FTEs to support it 
+ ongoing services when things change 
+ delays due to extensive implementation time/effort

Written by Greg Dean, DevOps and Cloud Management Advisor with VMware.  Greg has an MBA from McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas Austin, with emphasis in Information Management and serves in a strategy and advisory role within the Cloud Management BU of VMware, Inc.

Feel free to contact Greg Dean at gdean@vmware.com

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1 This may not be the official definition of DevOps, but from my many data points collected from hundreds of meetings on the topic, it seems to be what most mean when the term is used.
2 Obviously not all $3-5B companies were created equal.  As a result, this is fraught with "it depends" statements.
3 This will depend on many factors, of course, but these results are a good approximation for the vast majority of organizations.
4 Many will include a solution as part of a large EA or ELA, but beware ... the balance of the costs over the time horizon far outweigh the cost of the software.