How Red Hat helps organizations build DevOps capabilities

The beginning of any new year brings a wealth of new opportunities for growth and change, which is equally valid for organizations across all industries. So, rather than falling into the same old routines, now is the time to focus on integrating and practicing more robust DevOps approaches and updating archaic practices.

Throughout 2021, Red Hat Services worked closely with customers and partners across many industries and engagements, both in-person and online, to provide consulting and technology solutions. These interactions have helped refine our observations, advancements, and key takeaways for future engagements, technology utilization, and implementation practices. Out of all of these, four stand out as the most significant focus areas that can bring the biggest impact to your organization's DevOps plan in 2022.

1. Focus on organizational dynamics to improve flow

Red Hat Open Innovation Labs is dedicated to working with organizations to advance business critical initiatives by improving workflow speed, outcomes quality, and usability, as well as employee and customer satisfaction. These multi-week residencies bring together organizational product experts with experienced Red Hat technology and process experts. 

Working together, they establish team charters, build platforms and corresponding teams, and create a focus on long-lived, high-performing team structure. Focused on streamlining workflows and empowering developers while maintaining psychological safety and an open culture, the Open Innovation Labs residencies are Red Hat’s answer to kicking off a lasting DevOps adoption journey.

2. Take advantage of the full value of cloud native technology

While the number of organizations implementing cloud-based technology continues to rise, many are not taking advantage of the full value of these technologies. Organizations with a more conservative approach to development often approach cloud-based technology similarly to older datacenter-type deployments, ultimately impacting the productivity and usefulness of these technologies. 

Red Hat offers a variety of cloud-based solutions, including Red Hat OpenShift 4 and Red Hat OpenStack, which provide platforms that allow for the acceleration of a true cloud-native development and hybrid-cloud adoption in your organization.

3. Integrate security sooner rather than later

To hardly anyone’s surprise, security continues its shift left in the development cycle, as the incorporation of automation in testing and validation becomes a powerful approach to improving velocity and quality.

DevSecOps helps accelerate deployments by incorporating trusted software supply chains into continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) processes. DevSecOps also aims to reverse the siloing of security teams that have plagued organizations in the past. 

Red Hat helps customers shift left in many ways, whether it’s with Red Hat container images that provide a trusted base for applications, or CI/CD features with OpenShift, or products like Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes.

4. Deliver DevOps and open transformation from the bottom up, but empower it from the top down

Shifting away from traditional practices into a modern-day DevOps and digital transformation requires collaboration across the organization, and a willingness to embrace a change in culture with a focus on bottom-up behavior change. 

As opposed to top-down implementation exemplified by previous frameworks such as ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library), bottom-up change helps foster psychological safety across teams as it allows the individuals who are actually accountable for the everyday workload to shape the process. This empowers the organization to optimize further, streamline workflows, and achieve a shared understanding of organizational goals and the journey ahead. 

Red Hat expertise

Red Hat Services helps customers translate their technology investments into measurable and meaningful business outcomes from solution implementation to enablement through DevOps-focused practices.