AWS re:INVENT 2017


Date : November 27–December 1, 2017
Location : ARIA, Encore, MGM, Mirage, The LINQ, The Venetian
Las Vegas, NV

Event Details

AWS re:Invent is a learning conference hosted by Amazon Web Services for the global cloud computing community. The event features keynote announcements, training and certification opportunities. At the conference, you’ll have access to more than 1,000 technical sessions, a partner expo, after-hours events, and so much more.

Why Attend

The event is ideal for developers and engineers, system administrators, systems architects, and technical decision makers.

[Know more about the Conference]

About Idexcel: Idexcel is a global business that supports Commercial & Public Sector organizations as they Modernize their Information Technology using DevOps methodology and Cloud infrastructure. Idexcel provides Professional Services for the AWS Cloud that includes Program Management, Cloud Strategy, Training, Applications Development, Managed Service, Integration, Migration, DevOps, AWS Optimization and Analytics. As we help our customers modernize their IT, our clients should expect a positive return on their investment in Idexcel, increased IT agility, reduced risk on development projects and improved organizational efficiency.

Allolankandy Anand Sr. Director Technical Sales & Delivery will be attending this event. For further queries, please write to anand@idexcel.com

What’s Next in DevOps: 5 Trends to Watch

The term “DevOps” is typically credited to this 2008 presentation on agile infrastructure and operations. Now ubiquitous in IT vocabulary, the mashup word is less than 10 years old: We’re still figuring out this modern way of working in IT.

Sure, people who have been “doing DevOps” for years have accrued plenty of wisdom along the way. But most DevOps environments – and the mix of people and culture, process and methodology, and tools and technology – are far from mature.

More change is coming. That’s kind of the whole point. “DevOps is a process, an algorithm,” says Robert Reeves, CTO at Datical. “Its entire purpose is to change and evolve over time.”

What should we expect next? Here are some key trends to watch, according to DevOps experts.

Read more..

Doing DevOps Right

DevOps-right
DevOps has become the talk of the town these days. With a lot of organizations beginning to employ the tactics on a day to day basis, there are a lot of options to explore from. While DevOps provides organizations an edge over the competition, the transition is not painless or easy.

How Can a Company Know if They are Doing DevOps Right?

Define Strategies: Strategies related to infrastructure use will help an organization gauge their resource requirements, thereby helping them capitalize on their needs and wants.

Implementation in Stages: In order to make DevOps a success story for your organization to live by, it is best to avoid implementing the techniques in the whole organization in the same go. Do it in pieces to measure the success in a step by step situation.

Cost Management: Define a process which showcases the costs involved in the deployment phase. Expenses need to be mapped to each process, so that there is a detailed costing procedure available to every process, making DevOps clear and concise.

Rapid Release Cycles: Release management encompasses the process of managing, scheduling and controlling software’s production phase and guiding it through the various stages, which includes software testing and software deployment.

Seamless Integration on Different Platforms: Software development is all about seamless integration and deployment. This is not limited to cross platform integration only. This includes maintaining uniformity in all possible stages, from beginning to end, wherein the software has to be tested effectively in order to achieve operational excellence.

Application Life Cycle Management: The software production cycle begins with requirements gathering, and ends with the software hitting the market post production. The whole procedure is dependent on rigorous testing using effective tools, which helps accelerate the operations process.

Performance Monitoring: Through performance testing and monitoring, a product’s functionality can be gauged, to achieve the desired results. Performance monitoring includes making sure no external factors are able to influence the working of the product or software.

Continuous Delivery: The process of continuous delivery can be manual as well as automated. User acceptance testing enables automation, which can ease out the product delivery.

Helping Organizations Develop DevOps the Right Way

Using Social Media: Employees can grasp the various nuances of DevOps through social media, which makes it all the easier to be abreast of the changes and the upcoming trends.

Conference Sessions and Events: DevOps themes can go a long way in educating employees of the trends prevailing in the technical industry. Companies and organizations should concentrate on bringing employees together to make sure the concepts of DevOps are done right.

Leverage Log Analysis: It’s important to notice a trend of failures and follow it to make amends. This trend would often involve a common point between users, decision makers as well as developers and implementers.

Working in Tandem with Operations and Developers: Understand the problem, and develop the solution. This is the key to successful implementation. When operations provide the problems, the developers need to find the solution and make sure it is implemented in the right manner. While ops have the burden of maintaining the up time, their focus can dwindle from the right approach, which is why it’s essential to let the developers work on what’s important.

Use Data for Analysis and Feedback: Log analysis data should be the common point for all people out there in an organization. Since data talks majorly about the loopholes in a process, it can go a long way in simplifying the problems and helping implement the solutions effectively.

Commitment to DevOps can really pay off, if implemented correctly. Since people form the backbone of DevOps strategy, they should be kept in focus at all times. Developers are needed to take onus of their product development so that quality does not take a hit. Once all the strategies are in place, companies and organizations alike can define and measure their DevOps procedures and identify the gaps which need to be plugged in eventually.

5 Ways DevOps and Automation Bolster Software Security


The fusion of DevOps and security goes hand in hand; a well groomed DevOps structure ensures faster and smoother software releases. Multiple releases might have been a farfetched dream 10 to 15 years ago; however, the true reality of today is that many software companies are functioning differently now.

DevOps has changed the very existence of how companies develop apps. However, what is important to note is that in the quest to get the software ready for deployment, the security of the launch should not be compromised. Fortunately, DevOps takes care of all the security nuances, since it has been fine tuned to provide risk free deployment, provided the right measures are taken at all times.

By fusing security measures into the working of DevOps, companies can ensure that maximum security measures are taken at all times. At the same time, it is also important to note that as developers and operations people start working together, there are a lot of security controls which can be affected or compromised in the long run. This show why DevOps tools are often met with resistance during the implementation stages.

When it comes to security, DevOps can be configured to secure all the phases of software development:

  • Security right from the start: Security, as a measure, does not have to be implemented at the last development stage only. It can be embedded from the initial stages itself, since it is a quality requirement. Through DevOps, one can incorporate automated security testing procedures efficiently and effectively to achieve compliance listed norms.
  • Automation security: As more and more tests are automated using DevOps, there are lesser risks of security flaws caused by human errors. With automation in place, the tests are more secure and efficient, making the development process more predictable and consistent.
  • Through security – through and through: DevOps security is implemented at every stage, which makes the process all the more consistent and useful. Right from development and testing to ops and security, everything is taken care of by DevOps, making the process simpler yet efficient.
  • Fix things quickly: Unfortunately, even DevOps implementation is not 100% security breach proof. However, since the deployment accelerates the lead time, it helps reduce the errors, since everything is following a consistent setup approach.
  • Enhanced governance for developers: DevOps is all about securing the governance for the developers involved in the production capabilities. Through consistent development, testing and release practices, developers are able to control the governance policies and provide utmost security to the software development and deployment. When everyone is aligned on the procedures and policies, a strict governance regime can be followed, in order to make the production stream more productive and conclusive.

Through DevOps, there are a lot of opportunities which can be explored with respect to software security. Automation, emphasis on software testing, feedback loops, collaboration and consistent release practices, companies are able to secure their software testing lines and provide faster

Top 9 Open Source DevOps Tools You Must Know

devops-tools
There was a time when developers and operations were always gnawing at each other’s throats. The production code was never updated on time, while the administrators always got irked over the ever piling server requests. As the battle ensued, it became all the more necessary to come up with an appropriate tool box, which could help rid both the parties of these battle lines.

This is where DevOps comes into the picture. DevOps is well configured to provide services which range from application portability to configuration management. While the list of services doesn’t end, it definitely makes life much easier for the end users. However, without the right kind of tools, even DevOps can’t make it to their destined uses.

Here are some of the names which stand out amongst the list of DevOps tools:

Chef:
Like the gourmet world, Chef is synonymous with the term recipes. It is a system and Cloud infrastructure, which automates an entire building, by deploying and managing infrastructure through short repeatable scripts, often termed as recipes. But the real power comes into play, when pluggable configuration modules are employed. Chef can be used to ease out complex tasks, perform automations, which can often prove to be heavy on resources, efforts and time.

Docker:
With Docker, you can expect portability, which is made possible through its unique containerization technology, often found in self contained units. The tool consists of a Docker Engine, a lightweight runtime and packaging tool and Docker Hub, which is essentially a cloud based service application, encompassing the concept of application sharing and workflow automation.

Puppet:
Puppet Enterprise, a unit of Puppet Labs, allows data orchestration by providing automation configurations and machine management. The latest version, Puppet 3.7, features Puppet Apps, and Node Manager, which helps manage large number of variable, dynamic systems. Puppet is also available as an open source software.

Jenkins:
Being an open source standard for managing DevOps, Jenkins allows everything, right from delivering code to production to source code management. Since it is a pluggable, de facto engine, it proves to be an ecosystem with more than 1100 plugins for the users. Jenkins has proved to be a continuous delivery and a continuous integration for developers.

ELK:
ELK, by Elastic, is a NoSQL database that is made on the Lucene search engine. ELK Stack is not just one tool, but a combination of 3 different tools rolled into one. ELK stands for Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana; all three are open source projects, which are individually maintained by Elastic.

Cassandra:
Apache Cassandra is considered to be a good choice, when you need scalability, availability without worrying about performance. Through this tool, data is automatically replicated between multiple nodes. While single system replication is supported, one can also perform multiple systems replication. Thankfully, there are no single points of failure, which makes it a great devops tool.

Ansible:
Conceived by Michael Dehaan, Ansible was released in the year 2012. It is a configuration management platform which leverages Python to configure systems. The systems are expressed in the YAML format, which is a construct, commonly known as a Playbook. A Playbook has been tweaked to provide configurations for single and multiple systems at the same time.

Splunk:
If real time issue fixing is what you are looking for, then Splunk is your first time solution. It allows visualization of data, while taking cues from production environments. All this can be done without requiring access to production machines. With Splunk, users can access and embrace processes, which include successful integration and deployment.

SaltStack:
SaltStack helps in data automation, cloud building, server provisioning and application configuration. Since this tool is an event drive automation tool, it enables automation within the DevOps workflow. It features around 200 virtual machines, each of which is capable of running in the staging and production environment.

These were some of the top 9 DevOps tools which are helping bridge the gaps between production and development environments. Choose the one which suits your business needs and see the difference in your business operations instantly.

9 Big Mistakes DevOps Teams Make

There are plenty of benefits to be gained from a move to DevOps, but here are some mistakes that you really want to avoid so you can get those benefits.

If organizations want to maximize the benefits they experience as a result of embracing DevOps, they’ll need to avoid these “gotchas”.

If you’re going to adopt DevOps, you better do it right.

According to the RightScale 2017 State of the Cloud report, 84% of enterprises and 72% of small to medium-sized businesses have adopted some DevOps practices. These organizations are attracted to DevOps benefits like greater agility, improved customer satisfaction, greater employee morale, greater productivity and business growth. Read more..

Agile Dev West conference – June 4–9, 2017- Las Vegas, NV USA

Date : June 4–9, 2017

Location : Las Vegas, NV

Discover the latest in agile methods, technologies, tools, and leadership rinciples.

Whether you’re new to the agile process and need to get up to speed quickly, or you’re experienced and ready to take your team or organization to the next level, our hands-on, in-depth workshops have you covered. Plus, all Agile Dev West is held in conjunction with Better Software West and DevOps West conferences, allowing you to choose from three distinct programs.

To register for the event, click here.

Tailoring Your DevOps Transformation to Organizational Culture – Idexcel DevOps Roundup

devops team work

1. Tailoring Your DevOps Transformation to Organizational Culture

In the ‘2016 State of DevOps Report’ the Westrum Model [1] of organizational culture is proposed. It focuses on information flow, high cooperation and trust as predictive factors of DevOps success in a company. It is a perfect future state design tool which, however, tells little about where your company is at the moment. Moreover, it does not suggest how to influence an organizational culture and in which direction it should change. Read more…

2. How to Set Up a Continuous Delivery Environment

With the increasing popularity of microservices, more and more is being said about Continuous Delivery. There are many interesting books and articles about that subject. There are also many tools and solutions that can help set up a Continuous Delivery environment. Read more…

3. DevOps done right: Why work-life balance matters to digital transformation success

As enterprises in every industry grapple with digital transformation, and fixate on meeting user demands for always-on services, IT departments find themselves under growing pressure to perform and deliver. Read more…

4. Is DevOps security about behavior or process?

One of my main roles is improving the security of the software produced by my employer, and it was in that role that I attended the annual gathering of the security industry in San Francisco last week. The RSA Conference is one of the two global security conferences I attend, the other being Blackhat. While Blackhat has become more corporate, it’s still dominated by hackers and focuses more on vulnerabilities, whereas RSA is very much a corporate event focused on enterprise security and security policy. Read more…

5. Finance industry leading the way in DevOps implementations, research says

Financial services firms are embracing DevOps approaches and best practices more quickly than other industries, according to new research from managed services provider Claranet. Read more…