In today’s dynamic business environment collaboration is the name of the game. As work environments become global, teams become disparate and hybrid, and the world of opportunities becomes boundaryless, having the right systems, processes, tools, and technology ecosystem powering the enterprise become critical drivers of business success. Agility, resilience, and flexibility to adapt to changing market demands and business dynamics also become critical skills to develop to thrive in this competitive climate.
Software Delivery methodologies like DevOps and technologies such as the cloud have been a response to help businesses remain ahead of the curve.
The Global DevOps Market size is estimated to reach USD 12,215.54 million by 2026.
However, existing systems, applications, and business processes have to evolve according to changing business needs. They also have to support the new world of hybrid work.
While doing so, they have to ensure that they address all scaling challenges and speed and move processes and systems to the cloud to avoid complexity – while keeping security top of mind.
How Atlassian comes to the rescue?
Atlassian tools like Jira, Confluence, BitBucket, Bamboo, Opsgenie etc. help organizations build transparency, enable seamless information flow, drive collaboration and automate delivery pipelines & monitoring of applications. Along with a wide selection of tools, Atlassian offers multiple integrations, connectors, and plug-ins in its ecosystem to accelerate the ease and speed of application delivery.
Atlassian is especially well suited for the DevOps environment owing to its range of marketplace apps ecosystem. The integrations, connectors, and plug-ins can also drive hybrid DevOps where teams use Atlassian in conjunction with other DevOps tools like Jenkins, Artifactory, Sonarcube, Qtest etc. to meet their enterprise needs.
Why use a delivery partner or an ODC for Atlassian?
The entire Atlassian tools ecosystem is designed with keeping evolving enterprise needs in mind. They understand that while there can be a common (and expansive) tool ecosystem, the one-size-fits-all approach is not well suited for today’s business environment and certainly not with DevOps.
Each DevOps team is set uniquely and, hence, has its own unique needs. The tools ecosystem has to be such that it fits in seamlessly with the enterprise’s needs and can be customized to address the exact needs of different teams and the enterprise.
Building in-house capabilities for Atlassian implementation can become an effort-intensive process. While many enterprises have built teams with JIRA Admin skill sets, they struggle when it comes to Migrations, complex upgrades, integration, exploration of new use cases etc.
Specialized skills are needed to –
– Navigate the architectural considerations of the tools
– Build customizations and plug-ins
– Develop custom and scalable applications
– Design cross functional & cross division workflows
– Ensure the right integrations & automations
– Provide ongoing support based on the changing enterprise needs
These need complete product and tools knowledge coupled with integration experience, and process and DevOps expertise to build a capable tools ecosystem that optimizes the delivery process. Along with that, there are costs to mitigate and timelines to meet. So effectively Enterprises need the right composition of skill sets including Atlassian Admins, Atlassian Automation Engineers, JIRA Developers, Atlassian Solution Architects & Implementors. With any or some of these skill sets missing in the team, Enterprises approach specialists like enreap to cater to that as a separate project. Imagine the time & cost it takes to do requirement gathering, SoWs, commercial negotiations for such projects.
ODCs emerge as a viable solution to mitigate the challenge. The ODC concept is no longer in its nascent stage. If anything, these emerge as a great solution to developing lacking in-house competencies. Leveraging an offshore delivery partner in India can help companies address the following challenges –
Address the Atlassian tech talent shortage
According to the Upskilling 2021: Enterprise DevOps Skills Report, over 60% of IT business leaders struggle to find DevOps experts.
The growing need for skilled Atlassian implementation experts has created a skills shortage of sorts. Most organizations struggle to get the right mix of technical expertise, and in-depth knowledge, which must be complemented with implementation experience.
Atlassian tools are also used extensively to drive DevOps. Atlassian experts with deep knowledge of DevOps are hard to find. It is only with the right mix of talent and skills that organizations can reap the benefits of DevOps and optimize productivity. An ODC in India helps in navigating the talent crunch with comfort and confidence by helping the enterprise access cost-effective, high-quality talent, coupled with the skills and experience needed for complex implementations.
Scale DevOps systems and processes effortlessly
DevOps initiatives need to be scaled systematically to deliver on their benefits. To optimize and improve, organizations need to continuously monitor their entire ecosystem and ensure efficiency and effectiveness.
For this, it is important to scale DevOps systems and processes by proactively identifying the right candidates for improvement, and making sure that the right integrations, automation, custom development, etc. power the DevOps velocity.
Organizations can adopt this proactive stand with the right skill sets at hand. In their absence, this becomes a Herculean task.
A delivery partner in India or partnering with an ODC makes sure that the right expertise is available and that no time is wasted. With end-to-end Atlassian and DevOps capabilities in place, improving productivity, efficiency and time-to-market become effortless and timely.
Optimize the development process
Organizations need a mix of knowledge, talent, skills, and implementation experience to keep DevOps on the path of continuous improvement. Given the delivery partners/ODC have the exact skills, talent, and experience needed for this, it becomes much easier for them to understand the existing state of affairs and identify the gaps and the right model, tools, and applications needed.
Using their expertise and experience, delivery partners can also keep workflows and processes optimized and ensure clear and transparent dashboarding and reporting. Integrating Agile Coaches &/or Scrum masters in these ODCs ensures systems evolve in line with business agility goals of the Enterprise. They implement the right integrations and automation to make the process faster and more productive. The experience can also help deliver customized tools at speed to meet evolving enterprise needs, and keep the entire development ecosystem relevant and efficient for the new world of work.
Managed Services offer greater support
One of the greatest advantages of leveraging delivery partners or ODCs in India is the access to end-to-end managed support infrastructure that not only takes care of implementations but also delivers customized training, rollouts and hand holding business users. Along with proactive monitoring of the tools, updates, and upgrades, delivery partners also monitor and ensure process adherence and escalations, and manage the security permissions capably.
Additionally, an ODC provides immense business value by helping organizations manage certain operational and administrative aspects. DevOps and Atlassian implementations need dedicated teams and skilled resources. Developing these capabilities in-house can be expensive. That apart, managing the complexity of the talent pool and making sure that the right skills are always available can become a complex task.
ODCs also take care of all the low-value work such as counting time logs and managing low-level activities. With this time-consuming activity out of the way, enterprises can then focus on project outcomes and work packets instead. Imagine a Atlassian & DevOps Managed team operating out of an ODC in India where there are contractual KPIs and Enterprises only have to take care of one Monthly invoice.
An ODC partner can take care of all the DevOps and IT complexities associated while the enterprise can focus on “what they need for their business and why”.
The delivery partners or ODCs like enreap capably address the “what and how” part of the technology considerations that need to be made to support the business.
In Conclusion
Keeping up with so many variables in DevOps and accounting for all the needs and dependencies of technologies, applications, and processes while sustaining collaboration can be challenging. Organizations need to create a robust tools ecosystem to navigate this complex and challenging world of work with clarity and transparency while ensuring seamless information flow between disparate teams.
An ODC gives enterprises access to Atlassian expertise across skills coupled with DevOps experience. This helps them respond to changing demands with greater agility and responsiveness and cost-effectively. The offshore partner can provide the right advisory on your technology roadmap, its value, considerations, etc., capably design the technology adoption solution and implementation roadmap and then act as the extension of the in-house Atlassian & DevOps team.
Connect with us to see how we can power up your DevOps initiatives and extend Atlassian capabilities to future-proof the business.