Welcome to this IBM Rational podcast, Leverage. IBM's PureApplication System to Jump-Start DevOps. I'm

Transcription

1 IBM Podcast [ MUSIC ] Welcome to this IBM Rational podcast, Leverage IBM's PureApplication System to Jump-Start DevOps. I'm Kimberly Gist with IBM. Businesses are working to address the challenges of today's complexities, coupled with demand that has lowered delivery timelines from months down to weeks and even days. The key to a successful DevOps program is bringing together environment delivery, tooling, automation, governance and organizational collaboration. Today, Don Thomas, Global Cloud Sales Executive, joins us to discuss how the PureApplication system can act as a catalyst to launch a successful DevOps program. Don, welcome to the Rational Talks to You podcast series. Thank you for joining us and we look forward to our discussion today. Thank you, Kimberly. Why don't we start with our first question, Don. What would you say is the role of DevOps and PureApplications in continuous delivery of software innovation? -1-

2 So, the PureApp System has really proven from a client perspective to be a catalyst, as you mentioned in the opening for really launching a DevOps program. Because the PureApplication system is what we call an Expert Integrated System, meaning we have integrated hardware, middleware, software and service management capabilities within one system... It allows clients to very rapidly introduce a DevOps program, whether it's within a specific line of business, maybe it's around a new mobile innovation initiative, or maybe it's in response to the need to more rapidly deliver existing enterprise applications. And so, we've seen a great synergy between the use of that PureApplication system and the success of DevOps programs within our client base. Wonderful. So, where do you see the DevOps approach making the most impact in the software and delivery value chain? Well, if you look at the software delivery value chain and as it flows from a line of business to the development team, to the test team, and finally into production where it's maintained until end of life, no -2-

3 matter how many optimizations each one of those areas makes, what we see is it's the hand-off between those organizations and operations that is really the place where, if you can optimize those hand-offs as you transition your software between each of these points, that's where you can make the biggest impact. So, having, for instance, pattern-based deployment of applications, having automation in place that transitions from dev to test, being able to have the appropriate service management capabilities so that when you transition from test into production, you can assure quality of service, that's where we really see a significant value. And of course the PureApplication system has a great set of tooling and capabilities to really enable that. Okay. So, optimizing the hand-off. Our next question would be the PureApplication system provides a natural environment for DevOps and for continuous delivery. So, Don, what capabilities are crucial for accelerating application delivery then? Well, that's a great question. And so, if you look at the beginning of the process, having the ability to first of all do your planning, release planning, that's a significant challenge for clients today, especially when most clients are looking at what we call multi-channel -3-

4 releases. So, to release a new capability to their clients, they may have to update a back end system of record. They may have to update a Web site and a mobile application all simultaneously. So, having the ability to coordinate those releases and orchestrate those is very important. When you move into development and test, the ability to automate builds, the ability to deliver environments to your development and test team so they have the right infrastructure, they have the right middleware and they have the right testing tooling is very important. Application release automation has become a very important topic for our clients. So, not only being able to release into development, into test, but also production. And doing that in an automated way that will reduce the amount of configuration errors, reduce cost and ultimately reduce time to market. The other piece of this is the service management aspect. So you want to be able to monitor those environments in development, in test and in production; you also want to be able to monitor the performance of those applications and the systems in the environment. -4-

5 And so, the PureApplication system, along with a lot of the unique Rational tooling, like Urban Code, like our Rational test virtualization capabilities and our collaborative lifecycle management capabilities, coupled with the PureApplication system, provide a very powerful solution for our clients in that area. Great. So, then we can say that some key capabilities are definitely coordination, automation, development, service management, in this entire...in the scheme of things. So, we have to look at the fact that many businesses see a critical need to be able to quickly put together apps in order to conduct market experimentation that would determine future business direction. Don, how do you see such market experiments benefitting from the combination of DevOps and the PureApplication system? Well, Kimberly, if you look at the speed of business today, there's a lot of transformation taking place that's really driving the need to rapidly get feedback on new capabilities that our clients are releasing. So, when you look at mobile, you look at social, the need to obtain customer intimacy, to be the first in your industry to differentiate yourself by providing new capabilities, you -5-

6 need a platform and a solution that allows for that rapid experimentation. A lot of our clients have embraced the philosophy of fast fail, meaning they want to get capability out to clients as soon as possible and get that feedback before they invest more in the development of the capability. So, the days of 12- to 18-month waterfall development lifecycles are gone. Clients now want to realize feedback from either their internal users or external users immediately, within weeks or even days in some cases. And so, using PureApplication, the PureApplication system, you have everything you need in terms of infrastructure, platform in the service management capabilities so that you can do this experimentation. You can have a team, for instance, rapidly build a mobile application, deploy it within the PureApplication system, test it and get feedback in a very short period of time. This has become really a number one driver for our clients. Software drives innovation, which drives ultimately market share. And the PureApplication system along with our DevOps capability really enables that for our clients. Wow, fast fail is a great way to kind of -6-

7 identify the speed of business driving the need to get the feedback. That's a wonderful way to put it into perspective for our listeners. Well, Don, one more question for you today. What would you say are the organizational considerations when you use the PureApplication to jump-start a DevOps program? So, organizational considerations are incredibly important. A lot of people, when they first think about DevOps, they think about the technology and the tooling. When you look at the software development lifecycle and that full value chain, if you will, from the lines of business that are saying, hey, these are the new capabilities that we need to have to dev, to test and then to IT operations, you must have a significant focus on those organizational aspects. So, you have to be able to enable the transition of the software very smoothly through that software delivery pipeline. So, you have to start thinking about things like governance. How do we start talking about the platforms that we want to implement? How can we get some standardization in place so that we have a reasonable number of platforms that we can manage? How do we get the automation in place so that when we want to say automate the full deployment of an application that -7-

8 requires infrastructure provisioning, it requires middleware provisioning, database provisioning, we want to set up security. These responsibilities cross the boundary lines at a client. And so, it's very important to get those stakeholders on board with your DevOps program and involve them in creating that governance and the guidelines. So, you really want them all involved up front, because the measurement has really changed at our clients from measuring each of those silos, if you will, on their performance to measuring the absolute performance from initiation through realization and clients accessing that capability. So, it's very important whether it's a strict governance organizational configuration or whether it's a matrixed organizational configuration. You really have to consider that up front and get buy-in. The clients that do that, really we see them having the most success with their DevOps program. When you couple that organizational optimization with the technology and the tools, that's a home run. That's where you really see success. Well, thank you, Don. A great overview on the PureApplication system and its key role in continuous -8-

9 delivery. We sincerely appreciate you taking the time to join us and share your expertise today. Thank you so much. That was Don Thomas, Global Cloud Sales Executive, with some key points for today's podcast event, Leverage IBM's PureApplication System to Jump-Start DevOps. To hear this specific podcast or browse additional topics check out our Rational Talks to You podcast page at This has been an IBM podcast. [END OF SEGMENT] -9-