Managed service providers are becoming a growing influence in the business world. With high-speed internet widely available, and the proliferation of cloud services in general, attitudes towards the remote management of services have changed considerably in a relatively short space of time. Businesses across the spectrum are increasingly turning to managed service providers to take care of some, or all, of their IT needs.Software developers are just one of the many business individuals that can benefit from managed service providers. Many IT teams are leveraging external expertise to expand and improve their own development processes. An outside perspective can add much-needed input for organizations who are keen to streamline and make continuous improvements to their technology value stream. So, while many businesses can be adequately catered to with non-specific IT service management, others, such as those in software development, require a custom solution and specialized approach.
DevOps-as-a-Service (DaaS) is a way of establishing researched best practices and sharing essential tools with a company’s software development team. The tools and methodology advocated by DevOps are designed to facilitate the collaboration between development and operations teams. The cultural management practice encourages cross-skill sharing and learning to blend the two teams into a more cohesive single unit. In particular, the methods ensure compatibility between the tools used by the software development team. As well as those used by the IT operations team.By utilizing DaaS, businesses can ensure that every action they carry out in the development and delivery of their software can be tracked and reviewed later. Leveraging DaaS within an internal system is a valuable approach when monitoring outcomes and formulating strategies for hitting internal objectives. It also facilitates the flow of feedback to all involved in the development pipeline. Which helps to motivate on-the-job learning when problems are identified.By streamlining and sharing the management of data and information, DaaS is able to offer developers and operations engineers a more comprehensive approach to building infrastructure, designing software apps, and provisioning cloud environments.
It doesn’t matter how talented the members of your development team are; if you don’t have an efficient workflow for them to follow, you are going to operate inefficiently. There are many very talented coders who are used to working individually and collaboratively at a distance. Whatever your IT setup, DevOps Consulting helps bring remote individuals and in-house teams together cohesively and harmoniously.DevOps consultancy is just what it sounds like. Hiring a consultant to help you and your team get your DevOps transformation in order. A DevOps consultancy service can help you to ensure that your software development and operations departments coexist in sync. Often it is difficult to see areas for improvements from within a system. DevOps consulting services deliver an unbiased view to help identify aspects of your pipeline that are hurting your overall business.
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is a service which allows software developers to develop applications in the cloud. PaaS relieves the need to provision and maintain the necessary infrastructure in-house. Using PaaS allows software developers to test, run, and manage their software without having to deal with the anxiety of running the infrastructure too. This can save businesses a considerable amount of money because they can utilize a powerful remote server running PaaS software in order to test how their software performs. This reduces the need to keep powerful, high-end rigs on site.Another advantage of PaaS in software development is that it allows developers to test their software across different platforms and operating systems. It saves time in the development of software by eliminating the need for a business to invest time and money building and maintaining the appropriate servers, databases, and other systems in-house. On-premise hardware can quickly become a drain on time, resources, and money for IT teams. Paas mitigates all these by delivering Cloud infrastructure, agility, and scalability.
For many teams, PaaS has found particular value within the fields of business intelligence and analysis. Information is one of the most powerful tools available to the modern business. Many organizations generate vast amounts of data. Yet, often they lack the cutting edge capabilities to process, analyze, and store it effectively. Some companies struggle to develop any kind of coherent policy for putting such data to use.With PaaS, it is possible to automate the collation and analysis of data. Many cloud platforms help companies create analysis reports which can identify trends, alert for performance issues, and evaluate security. Such analytics makes for a much more responsive business which can react to market information and pivot accordingly.
In addition to the benefits outlined above, which apply specifically to software developers, there are a number of general benefits to working with a managed service provider to consider. First and foremost, a managed service provider can offer businesses access to infrastructure and services that would either be prohibitively expensive to acquire in-house or which would require additional staff and costs to manage. With a managed service provider, businesses gain access to the latest technology. Without having to take on any of the costs of maintaining it.A further benefit of managed service providers is the additional layer of application and infrastructure monitoring and supervision. This responsive secondary support for your multiple environments can help mitigate many security, privacy, and performance risks you may be experiencing.With a managed service provider running day-to-day IT administration, your development team is free to focus on more important tasks. Such as innovating new features, writing code, and delivering products which generate value for your end users. Efficiency is the key to success in the arena of software development. So, freeing up your best coders to focus on key objectives can provide a real boost to business productivity.
Managed service providers have a great deal to offer the world of software development. With developers always on the lookout for ways of improving workflows efficiency, as well as the growing sophistication of cloud-based services and infrastructure, managed service providers will continue to play a prominent role in software development.For more on the power of DevOps, read our post on Optimizing DevOps and the AWS Well-Architected FrameworkIbexlabs is an experienced DevOps & Managed Services provider and an AWS consulting partner. Our AWS Certified DevOps consultancy team evaluates your infrastructure and make recommendations based on your individual business or personal requirements. Contact us today and set up a free consultation to discuss a custom-built solution tailored just for you.
Kiran is a Lead DevOps Engineer at Ibexlabs. With extensive knowledge in managing AWS services like EC2, VPC, Route53, S3, SES, RDS, ELB, Cloudwatch, and IAM he has been an integral part of client projects.
