DevOps adoption in the mid-market to soar over next two years

While the flat structure of DevOps has traditionally favoured the agility of small organisations, which are able to introduce new work cultures and reorganise roles, larger organisations are swiftly starting to take the lead, research from Claranet suggests. According to the managed services provider, the trend goes against conventional wisdom that larger mid-market firms lack the agility to on-board the approach and the change reflects the increased importance of the speed that companies release products to the market.

The research, which surveyed 900 IT decision-makers from across the UK and Europe from a range of organisations, found that DevOps adoption is set to grow significantly over the next two years. Today, around a quarter (26 per cent) of European mid-market businesses (100-2000) have taken a DevOps approach, though a further 42 per cent have plans to implement one in the next two years.

This growth will predominantly come from larger mid-market organisations as they look to take advantage of new development methods to counter the agility of smaller players; within the next two years, 64 per cent of businesses with more than 500 employees expect to have implemented DevOps, compared with just 45 per cent of those with fewer.

Neil Thomas, Product Director at Claranet explained: “With larger companies now leading the DevOps charge, the differentiation it previously brought to smaller organisations could drop significantly. Sizeable companies are firmly demonstrating the collaboration skills necessary for this way of working, including agile decision-making processes and the flexibility to incorporate new ideas quickly. Our research has shown that a dramatic shift is happening within the IT sector, with conventional wisdom about the lack of agility in large organisations being thrown out in favour of a new paradigm.”

Neil went on to say that companies looking to adopt this approach over the next two years need to make sure their organisations are fully prepared in terms of culture, technology, and partners for this new lean development approach to work.

“Larger organisations are finding implementation requires both a complete cultural shift, as well as the introduction of new IT tooling. Strong partnerships can be critical here. Working with a partner that has experience in various applications and strong DevOps expertise enables organisations to deliver on their DevOps promises” Neil concluded.