Next-Generation InfraOps

Traditional IT capabilities, activities, organizational structures, and culture need to adjust to leverage the value of cloud, optimize spend, and manage risk.
Different stakeholders across previously separate teams rely on one another more than ever, but rules of engagement do not yet exist.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

By defining your end goals and framing solutions based on the type of visibility and features you need, you can enable speed and reliability without losing control of the work.

Impact and Result

Understand the xOps spectrum and what approaches benefit your organization.
Make sense of the architectural approaches and enablement tools available to you.
Evolve from just improving your current operations to a continuous virtuous cycle of development and deployment.

Next-Generation InfraOps Research & Tools

1. Next-Generation InfraOps Storyboard – A deck that will help you use Ops methodologies to build a virtuous cycle.

This storyboard will help you understand the spectrum of different Agile xOps working modes and how best to leverage them and build an architecture and toolset that support rapid continuous IT operations

Next-Generation InfraOps

Embrace the spectrum of Ops methodologies to build a virtuous cycle.

Executive summary

Your Challenge

IT Operations continue to be challenged by increasing needs for scale and speed, often in the face of constrained resources and time. For most, Agile methodologies have become a foundational part of tackling this problem. Since then, we've seen Agile evolve into DevOps, which started a trend into different categories of "xOps" that are too many to count. How does one make sense of the xOps spectrum? What is InfraOps and where does it fit in?

Common Obstacles

Ultimately, all these methodologies and approaches are there to serve the same purpose: increase effectiveness through automation and improve governance through visibility. The key is to understand what tools and methodologies will deliver actual benefits to your IT operation and to the organization as a whole.

Info-Tech's Approach

By defining your end goals and framing solutions based on the type of visibility and features you need, you can enable speed and reliability without losing control of the work.

Understand the xOps spectrum and what approaches will benefit your organization.
Make sense of the architectural approaches and enablement tools available to you.
Evolve from just improving your current operations to a continuous virtuous cycle of development and deployment.

Info-Tech Insight

InfraOps, when applied well, should be the embodiment of the governance policies as expressed by standards in architecture and automation.

Project overview

Understand the xOps spectrum	There are as many different types of "xOps" as there are business models and IT teams. To pick the approaches that deliver the best value to your organization and that align to your way of operating, it's important to understand the different major categories in the spectrum and how they do or don't apply to your IT approach.
How to optimize the Ops in DevOps	InfraOps is one of the major methodologies to address a key problem in IT at cloud scale: eliminating friction and error from your deliveries and outputs. The good news is there are architectures, tools, and frameworks you can easily leverage to make adopting this approach easier.
Evolve to integration and build a virtuous cycle	Ultimately your DevOps and InfraOps approaches should embody your governance needs via architecture and process. As time goes on, however, both your IT footprint and your business environment will shift. Build your tools, telemetry, and governance to anticipate and adapt to change and build a virtuous cycle between development needs and IT Operations tools and governance.

The xOps spectrum

This is an image of the xOps spectrum. The three main parts are: Code Acceleration (left), Governance(middle), and Infrastructure Acceleration (right)

xOps categories

There is no definitive list of x's in the xOps spectrum. Different organizations and teams will divide and define these in different ways. In many cases, the definitions and domains of various xOps will overlap.

Some of the commonly adopted and defined xOps models are listed here.

DevOps: Bringing Ops and Dev together to improve speed and flexibility of delivery cycles; applying a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) approach to Agile.
DevSecOps: Integration of security throughout the entire software development and operation lifecycle.
GitOps: A form of DevOps that focuses on leveraging revision control systems such as Git as the foundation for an automated CI/CD pipeline.
MLOps: The automation of deployment and decommissioning of resources used for machine learning.
FinOps: Automation of cost governance and visibility, particularly around a public cloud or multiple public cloud footprints.
ModOps: Approaching the modernization of legacy applications via a DevOps methodology.
AIOps: The automation of deployment and decommissioning of resources used for AI functions in applications being developed.
InfraOps: The umbrella Ops term for automation and acceleration of infrastructure, platforms, and environments used in the various phases of a CI/CD pipeline.
DataOps: A lifecycle approach to data analytics that uses Agile practices to orchestrate tools, code, and infrastructure to quickly deliver high-quality data to users and applications.

Shift left? Shift right?

Cutting through the jargon

Shifting left is about focusing on the code and development aspects of a delivery cycle.
Shifting right is about remembering that infrastructure and tools still do matter.

Info-Tech Insight

Shifting left or right isn't an either/or choice. They're more like opposite sides of the same coin. Like the different xOps approaches, usually more than one shift approach will apply to your IT Operations.

IT Operations in the left-right spectrum

Shifting from executing and deploying to defining the guardrails and standards

This is an image of the left-right spectrum for your XOps position

Take a middle-out approach

InfraOps and DevOps aren't enemies; they're opposite sides of the same coin.

InfraOps is about the automation and standardization of execution. It's an essential element in any fully automated CI/CD pipeline.
Like DevOps, InfraOps is built on similar values (the pillars of DevOps).
It builds on the principle of Lean to focus on removing friction, or turn-and-type activities, from the pipeline/process.
In InfraOps, one of the key methods for removing friction is through automation of the interstitia between different phases of a DevOps or CI/CD cycle.

Optimize the Ops in DevOps

Focus on eliminating friction

This is an image of an approach to optimizing the ops in DevOps.

With the shift from execution to governing and validating, the role of deployment falls downstream of IT Operations.

IT Operations needs to move to a mindset that focuses on creating the guardrails, enforced standards, and compliance rules that need to be used downstream, then apply those standards using automation and tooling to remove friction and error from the interstitia (the white spaces between chevrons) of the various phases.

InfraOps tools

Four quadrants in the shape of a human head, in the boxes are the following: Hyperconverged Infrastructure; Composable Infrastructure; Infrastructure as code and; Automation and Orchestration

Info-Tech Insight

Your tools can be broken into two categories:

Infrastructure Architecture
- HCI vs. CI
Automation Tooling
- IaC and A&O

Keep in mind that while your infrastructure architecture is usually an either/or choice, your automation approach should use any and all tooling that helps.

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