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xPaaS also speeds time to market by
accelerating trial and error. Engineers
and architects can often approach
development problems in multiple ways,
several of which may appear equally
viable, leaving teams uncertain of which
to choose. Instead of having to sit and
envision every scenario before writing a
single line of code, developers working
in an xPaaS environment can simply try
different solutions and find out which
works best.
Reducing risk
The same xPaaS features that accelerate
time to market also reduce development
and deployment risk. An intuitive GUI
presents the simple logic of the situation
and automates the complex, underlying
processes, shielding applications from
a major source of risk: human error.
xPaaS takes advantage of the fact that
computers are better at repeatedly
executing tedious tasks, which frees up
humans to focus on what they're better
at: higher-level logic, thinking, and
creativity.
xPaaS also de-risks the delicate transition
from development to production. In the
past, developers would cobble together
an intricate and fragile environment
on their workstations, miraculously
get their application running, and the
moment they needed to recreate that
environment on the way to production,
forget how they built it—which versions
of which modules they used, for
example. But for developers working
in an xPaaS environment, replication is
much easier, partly because the platform
built the environment automatically, and
partly because the platform consistently
documents and audits the steps that
go into creating the application. Once
developers build an application using
xPaaS, the underlying machinery can
produce however many instances are
needed.
Improving flexibility
Microservices and containers are the
latest in a long line of technology that
has catalyzed the xPaaS revolution and
improved IT organizations' flexibility.
Containers allow developers to
decompose applications into a greater
number of smaller modules, or
microservices. Before containers, a
cloud-based module had to run on a full
virtual server, a heavyweight operating
system, and all the virtual hardware
underneath. In those days, it didn't
make sense for developers to place only
a few lines of code on a virtual server.
Now, using lighter weight containers,
developers can run microservices on
commensurately small infrastructures.
At the same time, xPaaS has made
deploying and maintaining a proliferation
of microservices tractable.
By breaking down applications
into loosely-coupled microservices,
developers
and
IT
operations
professionals gain the ability to
create, modify, restart, and scale
each microservice independently. If
a particular microservice becomes a
performance bottleneck, for example,
operations can scale it without scaling
the whole application along with it. In
the xPaaS world, IT organizations can
improve their flexibility by thoughtfully
employing containers and microservices.
BizDevOps: the new
relationship between
development, operations,
and business
The xPaaS revolution is fueling the rise
of DevOps, the increasingly popular
software development methodology
that emphasizes collaboration between
developers ("Dev") and IT operations
("Ops"). Developers used to create
applications independently in their own
environment. After a certain point, they
threw applications over the wall to
operations, who had to figure out how
to install them, configure them, and
make them work in a real production
environment. The DevOps movement
is making developers and IT operations
professionals work more closely
together. As a result, developers are
more aware of applications' operational
attributes, which reduces the risk of
operational errors. The developer's role
has shifted. In exchange for the speed
gains associated with working in an
xPaaS environment, developers now
have to complete many infrastructure-
related tasks previously performed
by operations. Of course, operations
still has a role running and managing
applications.
But the most surprising and exciting
aspect of the xPaaS revolution is
that business people are starting to
collaborate more closely with their
IT organizations in creating new
applications. With the waterfall model,
business people used to imagine a
new application, write a detailed spec,
throw it over the wall to development,
wait a year or more, and then receive
an application that might or might not
turn out to be what they needed. In
the world of xPaaS, business people
can conceive of new applications in a
more iterative, trial-and-error fashion.
Developers can quickly create draft
applications to show business people,
who can give immediate feedback or
launch the applications and see how
customers respond. Enabling more
trial and error on the business front is
perhaps the greatest value of xPaaS.
In the beginning, there were three
siloed groups: development, operations,
and business. Then came DevOps,
which improved cooperation between
development and operations. Now the
prevailing development model won't be
DevOps, but BizDevOps, and all three
groups—development, operations, and
business—can collaborate and iterate
more tightly, creating better outcomes
for all.
BizDevOps is a new term, but in
practice, it's already here. The sooner
enterprises take advantage of the tighter
collaboration between developers, IT
operations professionals, and business
people that the xPaaS revolution has
facilitated, the greater their competitive
rewards will be.
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