F5 : NetOps Almost Meeting DevOps in the Automation Race

The difference is still no doubt the cause of some friction between the two groups. We noted that equal percentages of DevOps (43%) say deployment frequencies are 'good enough' and 'not frequent enough.' NetOps were equally split, with 31% saying deployment frequencies were 'good enough' and 30% agreeing frequencies were not meeting expectations.

That's a far cry from our previous survey in which a mere 18% of NetOps wanted to pick up the pace of deployments.

But automation take times - and effort. And challenges abound. It would be good for DevOps to remember that the current ecosystem of tools and toolsets are geared toward developers and application infrastructure. There's been little to no movement on nurturing the ecosystem on the NetOps side of the fence. It's hard to get continuous when there's not much in the way of integration to help you piece together the various components of the deployment pipeline puzzle.

And there's the real rub. One of the reasons DevOps has been so successful is that its comprised primarily of developers. Developers who live and breathe code. They have the know-how to integrate what needs integrating. NetOps doesn't necessarily have that skill set. The deployment pipeline is comprised primarily of devices and systems that integrate via protocols. Well-defined, RFC-based protocols that don't require code-based integration because they were designed not to.

This is a completely new challenge for NetOps; one they aren't necessarily prepared - or skilled - to meet. To wit, only a little more than a third (38%) of DevOps cited 'Integration of toolsets across vendors/devices' as a challenge to network automation. On the other side of the wall, almost half (47%) of NetOps noted lack of integration as a problem, second only to a lack of automation know-how (49%).

The data shows that despite the challenges inherent in automation, NetOps aren't nearly as far behind as some posit. There are a great number of opportunities in network automation for NetOps and Security alike to insert themselves into the continuous pipelines that increasingly dominate app development and deployment.

For more details and analysis on NetOps Meets DevOps: The State of Network Automation, be sure to grab your copy today!