Infrastructure as Code: Using Automation to Accelerate DevOps Principles

As we've said before - often we hear that DevOps is all about People, Processes, and Technology. In this episode, we put a spotlight on the people who bring it all together. The name DevOps might lead you to focus just on the considerations for developers and operations team members but there is more to a successful team than that. What are some of the key roles behind the curtain and what helps it all come together? What exactly is a product owner and how is that different from a project manager? What is a Site Reliability Engineer and what do they solve for? We interview current CDW Field Solution Architect and former Product Owner Viet Pham to find out more about that team makeup.

As a follow-up to their debate on Squaring off with CDW we invited Field Solution Architects Jeremey Wise, Ken Collins, and Viet Pham to dive deeper into what organizations should consider when starting down a path towards DevOps. People, Process, and Technology are core to that discussion. These 3 elements have long been identified as critical for successful organizational change. In fact, you may have heard that's a big part of what DevOps is about - People Process and Technology. So, what does that mean? How do you approach each and where do you start? This is a large topic with a lot to consider so we brought in experts from 3 different viewpoints to discuss. 

As concepts around DevOps have become more mainstream we've also seen an emergence of new best practices around security. The concept  "shifting left" is all about integrating security considerations and testing earlier into the software development lifecycle. We sit down with CDW's Cybersecurity Practice Lead Jeff Falcon and DevOps Sr Field Solution Architect Kyle Jepson to learn more. 

Hosts Mitch Krombach and Rachel Arey Pilcher forgo having a guest join to focus on the business outcomes derived from leveraging containers and Kubernetes. Earlier in the year, we touched on the what and the how of this technology, here we focus on the why? Ultimately it comes down to improved scalability and ease of portability across various environments. 

In a world where every business is in the software business, creating high-quality software quickly is critical. The Software Development Lifecycle is the methodology and process of creating software and getting it into production and in the hands of the end-user. We sit down with Ken Collins Sr. FSA at CDW within our Azure and DevOps practices to learn more. 

Which came first? It's hard to talk DevOps without talking about cloud and their intertwining best practices. We also talk about the concept of Cloud-native which is a lot more than just signing up with a cloud provider and using it to run your existing applications. It affects the design, implementation, deployment, and operation of your applications. We spend some time chatting with Drew Shanahan from CDW's Azure practice to break it all down. 

We interview CDW DevOps Field Solutions Architect and SAFe Agile Coach, Dave Roesch, on the important concept of  Infrastructure as Code. (IaC) is often considered a key attribute of enabling best practices in DevOps. Infrastructure as Code builds on the principles of automation to allow organizations to manage their infrastructure at scale and with better collaboration.  As a result, Developers become more involved in defining configuration and Ops teams get involved earlier in the development process. 

Application modernization is all about ensuring the best performance of applications as possible. We interview Tim Keating, Hyperscale Solutions Architect at CDW to break down why the old ways of managing and creating applications don't work anymore and the trends he's seeing within organizations who are excelling by doing things differently. 

Data is often an organization's most valuable asset. To learn more we interview Field Solutions Architect Jeremey Wise about how organizations make strategic decisions based on the data they capture and upcoming trends you can expect to see in this space. 

We interview Mark Yorko Principal Solutions Architect for Automation & Orchestration at CDW for his take on why organizations automate and the possible cost to those that don't.