Accelerating product development with cloud DevOps

Accelerating product development all the way to market maturity is crucial for companies. Customers expect continuous innovation, while technological advancements quickly become outdated and product life cycles are getting shorter.

Cloud DevOps (Development and Operations) helps companies significantly reduce development times through automated processes, preconfigured tools, and agile collaboration.

André Guldi, Product Manager Cloud at CONTACT Software, explains how you can leverage the synergies of DevOps and cloud services for increased efficiency in product development.

AG: In the allocation of work in software development, there has traditionally been an emphasis on departments. Developers wrote the code, which the quality management would then test. Afterward, IT was responsible for integrating the libraries into the production software.

DevOps breaks down the traditional separation between development and system design (Dev) and operation (Ops). Instead of three large teams, each responsible for their own tasks, this approach aims to bring experts from different areas together in small DevOps teams. This allows developers to gain a better understanding of the infrastructure, as well as the user-friendliness and testability of their code. At the same time, IT operations experts gain deep insights into development and testing processes.

DevOps integrates development and operations in agile teams. It provides an automated and standardized process that is qualified and documented, enabling faster software development and implementation.

AG: The close collaboration between development and operations in agile DevOps teams offers the following advantages:

1. Faster implementation: Thanks to seamless collaboration between teams in an agile development environment with efficient automation tools, applications can be deployed faster, and updates rolled out continuously.
2. Risk mitigation: Through continuous integration and ongoing testing, errors and security risks are detected and fixed before they affect the production environment. In addition, applications can be automatically restored after a crisis event.
3. Cost reduction: Automating development, testing, and deployment processes reduces manual efforts for recurring tasks. This saves time, resources, and money.
4. Quality improvements: The close collaboration in agile DevOps teams improves coordination and ensures a deeper understanding of the requirements. Additionally, continuous integration and automated testing guarantee high software quality that meets user expectations.

AG: DevOps and cloud technologies are symbiotic. The cloud enables us to automate, standardize, and replicate entire infrastructures. In combination, this extends the DevOps approach from development practices and testing applications to the agile deployment of infrastructures. Integrating the mentioned DevOps advantages into a flexible and scalable cloud environment that allows for resources to be adjusted according to demand provides a tremendous boost in software development. This way, cloud services and infrastructures can be deployed, configured, and – if necessary – shut down in a very short time.

Conclusion: CIM Database Cloud integrates the DevOps process and systematizes development and operational processes. Automated testing, preconfigured tools, and improved collaboration accelerate development cycles, identify errors early in the process, and allow rapid adjustments. Companies benefit from more efficient processes, faster iterations, and can better respond to their customers' needs.

Whether you already use a customized PLM system or are looking to implement a new one, our integrated DevOps service enables a wide range of customizations, testing, and deployments – seamlessly and directly in the cloud.

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