"DevOps As A Service" glossary

DevOps has already gone far to change IT culture. An agile technology combining software development (Dev) and software operation (Ops), it accelerates everything related to software and services, focusing on the concepts of monitoring and automation from integration to testing to post-deployment management. Yet, DevOps as a Service (DaaS) takes DevOps even farther.

DaaS

DaaS is a delivery model for the suite of tools that advance collaboration between software development and operations teams. Effectively, a DaaS provider improves on the idea of the toolchain (discrete, distinct software development tools linked or chained together within specific stages). Instead, DaaS sweeps in and forms into one efficient unit those divergent tools that make up the overall software development and delivery process.

DaaS aims to ensure every step in the delivery of software is tracked (along with associated ongoing feedback) so desired outcomes are achieved while successfully hiding complexities of data and information flow management. In this way, teams can use intuitive interfaces to more effortlessly call on the tools they require in order to best deliver the ultimate business value.

DaaS glossary of useful terms

Here are the top 10 words and abbreviations you need to know about DaaS.

1. Application Performance Management (APM) – Tools used in monitoring and management of performance and availability of software applications for the purpose of detecting and diagnosing complex problems in order to stabilize service.
2. Content Delivery Network (CDN) – (aka content distribution network) This is a distributed network of proxy servers and their data centers intended to ensure the best availability and performance by distributing the service spatially relative to end-users.
3. Continuous Delivery (CD) – Methodology that ensures software is always in a release-ready state throughout its lifecycle.
4. Continuous Deployment – A kind of CD (not appropriate in all situations) where deployment of new code to production is done automatically.
5. Continuous Integration (CI) – A method that requires developers to merge their code into a shared version control system (VCS), see below, in order to locate and address bugs and better manage release schedule for updates.
6. Deployment Pipelines – Process of taking code from version control to readily available to users automatically.
7. Scrum — Iterative, time-bound and incremental agile framework for completing complex or multiple projects.
8. Source Code Management (SCM) — This is used to track modifications to a source code repository, including a history of changes to a code base in order to resolve conflicts when merging updates from multiple contributors.
9. Static Code Analysis — (aka source code analysis) Process of debugging code through examination before a program runs by analyzing a set of code against a set (or multiple sets) of coding rules.
10. Version Control Systems (VCS) — (aka revision control or source control) The management of changes to documents, computer programs, sites and other collections of information.

These terms are helpful in understanding how, by integrating DevOps tool suites into a unified system, DaaS does improve DevOps goals by coexisting with traditional development and deployment processes — and so, ensuring collaboration, monitoring, management and reporting, while enabling the adoption of more flexible approaches in the changing marketplace.