The shift in operating methodology
Infrastructure industry has been transforming to different operating methodology to speed up the infrastructure designs/implementation/operations processes.
Historically, there has been some transformation from PPDIOO methodology (prepare, plan, design, implementation, operate, optimize) to infrastructure DevOps. However, DevOps model is very software engineering centric and therefore infrastructure engineers don't find it as an alternate to PPDIOO model.
Where DevOps falls short for infrastructure
So far, in most cases, DevOps in Infrastructure space has been limited to configuration management wherein infrastructure engineers have built automated configuration management systems to deploy configurations to infrastructure devices. Given, PPDIOO methodology is not 1-to-1 mapped to DevOps, infrastructure engineers still have to do the following:
- Capture customer engagement and business intent context to validate if current infrastructure can support it
- Architect & Design infrastructure architectures
- Capture customer intent to configuration policies rules
- Capture hardware and software requirements and manage BOM (bill of material)
- Perform Design & configuration validation
- Manage and track standards designs/offerings vs one-off designs/offerings
- Cost of Service & Delivery timelines
- Many more…
The case for NetOps / InfraOps
Therefore, we need a methodology & supported system called 'NetOps' or 'InfraOps', which uses best features of PPDIOO and DevOps model and enable a new optimized methodology wherein all the steps mentioned above can be digitized and visible not only to infrastructure IT providers but also to IT clients.
If you are interested to know how blaZop platform can help?
From PPDIOO to NetOps/InfraOps
What to remember
- PPDIOO (prepare, plan, design, implementation, operate, optimize) is the traditional operating methodology for infrastructure.
- DevOps is too software-engineering centric for infrastructure engineers to accept it as a replacement for PPDIOO.
- In practice, DevOps in the infrastructure space has been limited to automated configuration management.
- Engineers still manually handle business-intent validation, architecture and design, configuration policies, BOM management, validation, standards tracking, and cost/delivery timelines.
- A NetOps/InfraOps methodology should combine the strengths of PPDIOO and DevOps and digitize every step, visible to both infrastructure IT providers and IT clients.
