How To Make Your Business Better and Different With DEVOPS

To stand out, the goal is no longer to build something better than your competitors – it’s to create a truly differentiated experience.

May 23, 2022

How To Make Your Business Better and Different With DEVOPS

In our hyperconnected, digitalized world, cloud-based organizations have a decided advantage when it comes to application innovation. However, Yadhu Gopalan, CEO at Esper, shares how every brand can leverage DevOps to cut through the clutter.

The world now relies on dedicated devices. Between the kiosks pointing us in the right direction, the point-of-sale systems where we pay for our food, the seat-back tablets keeping us entertained, and so many other instances, it’s become the norm for us to interact with dedicated devices daily. 

But this change – to interact with our favorite brands through hardware – happened fast. So fast that when organizations deployed these devices into the field, the right tooling and infrastructure weren’t yet built. Businesses had two options. The first was to spend millions building it themselves. And the second was to rely on tools that only address some needs, such as mobile device management (MDM) platforms built for employee-owned cell phones and laptops. So the solutions were either wildly expensive or incomplete. 

On the other hand, organizations that live primarily in the cloud enjoy endless room for innovation, particularly when deploying, monitoring, and managing their applications. But it’s time for those of us on the ground to catch up with our friends in the cloud – and how we do that is with DevOps.

See More: Six Points to Remember While Developing a SaaS Application

The Time for DevOps Is Now – For Everyone

Customers expect everything to just work. And why shouldn’t they? That’s the expectation at the consumer level, and now it’s translating to the enterprise experience. And to stand out, the goal is no longer to build something better than your competitors – it’s to create a truly differentiated experience. And to act quickly enough to make that happen, organizations need DevOps. 

At its core, DevOps is not a technology – it’s a mindset – one that’s focused on high-velocity code changes in response to customer feedback, all in a continuous loop. For many in the dedicated device world, the phrase “high-velocity code changes” is panic-inducing. Because until now, software updates and device configuration changes have meant all hands on deck, waiting to hear what broke and then trying to make repairs amongst the chaos. 

But living in fear of updates isn’t sustainable because your updates have to happen more quickly than your customers’ increasing expectations. Fortunately, with DevOps, you’re not just reacting, you’re acting whenever innovation strikes. And if you’re working on a stable, flexible infrastructure that’s purpose-built for DevOps capabilities, you can sprint forward without the fear of breaking devices or disappointing customers.

DevOps Capabilities Needed to Innovate at Scale

We know that DevOps is an essential mindset for modernizing dedicated device fleet operations. But what does DevOps look like in action? Let’s get a little nerdy and look at the technical capabilities DevOps offers that empower organizations to transform their devices. 

Managing in groups: As organizations grow their device fleets from hundreds to thousands of devices in the field, the way these devices are managed has to change to scale. The key is the ability to manage multiple devices as one. Using this framework, device compliance policies and configurations are applied at a group level. This information defines what each device in that group should look like and changes made at the device level in real-time. For example, if you know every self-ordering kiosk across 100 restaurants should act the same, you can make changes to every device as if you’re only making it to one. So you only spend the time updating “one” device, but all devices are updated.

Deployment pipelines: As I mentioned earlier, one of the major advantages of DevOps is pushing application updates without fear. And to do that, you need to leverage deployment pipelines. Pipelines provide the ability to automate an update through stages such as first going to a device lab, then 10% of your fleet, then 30%, and so on. This creates a visible, manageable way to ensure that the updates work as expected – and, just as importantly – creates an opportunity to safely roll those updates back when necessary. In addition to application updates, device configuration changes such as system settings, branding, on-device content, etc., can also run through deployment pipelines for even greater fleet control and visibility.

Device telemetry: Real-time device and application data are essential for understanding customer behavior and building an exceptional experience. With real-time information, the ability to manage at scale is made possible because organizations can pivot to managing by exception rather than monitoring each device. This is also known as “drift management” — receiving alerts when devices fall out of compliance, so the problem can be addressed before it becomes a customer issue. 

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Device Nirvana Is End-to-end Automation

When you ask yourself what your organization can look like when you leverage the power of DevOps, the answer should be ‘automation.’ Because automation opens the door to focus on building what’s next instead of managing processes manually. 

Our client Spire Health provides in-home monitoring for chronic respiratory patients through wearable devices. It’s essential for these devices to stay online,  continuously feeding critical patient data back to care providers. Spire detects when a device has problems or goes offline using drift management. Then, an automated troubleshooting workflow is triggered to get the machine back online. This solution requires no intervention from Spire or the patient, and it happens as soon as there’s a problem – that’s the power of automation. 

Automating everything might feel like a pipedream, but starting exactly where you are, is the most crucial step in getting there. When I think about DevOps, I look at implementation and adoption as a curve. At the bottom left of the curve are manual processes and monitoring, and at the top right of the curve is leveraging drift management and advanced telemetry to manage a large number of devices through automation.

Where you’re at on this curve today won’t determine your success or failure, but continuing to move up this curve and adopt more mature DevOps processes is the only way to scale a business with dedicated devices successfully. Start progressing toward scalability by assessing your current tooling and infrastructure. Is true automation possible? If not, look for a new technology partner who can get you there. The solution is DevOps, and it’s available for everyone.

How are you using DevOps to scale your current infrastructure? Share with us on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We’d love to hear from you!

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Yadhu Gopalan
Yadhu is the co-founder, CEO and Chief Geek of Esper.io, a rapidly growing Android DevOps startup in Seattle. He has over 25 years of experience and 35 patents in embedded systems and security. Before founding Esper, Yadhu was Chief Architect for Windows CE and WIndows Phone, and a lead systems engineer for the FireOS and Amazon Go. Yadhu is passionate about bringing the benefits of mature infrastructure and DevOps practices to the enterprise edge deployments.
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