As DevOps continues to evolve, so do the insights that inform it. BMC recently hosted a conversation with DevOps guru Gene Kim to chat about his experiences in the space, and how companies are leveraging DevOps to succeed. In a separate blog, we recapped his thoughts on applying DevOps to traditional businesses and government agencies.
In this blog, we look at Jobs-as-Code—a DevOps approach that helps developers, engineers, and site reliability engineers (SREs) define, schedule, manage, and monitor workflows in production. Jobs-as-Code can benefit organizations in the areas of:
- Time savings
- Increased collaboration
- AI/ML workflow orchestration
Time savings
Evolving from slow, manual configuration and scripting processes to automated processes helps teams identify and locate potential defects and errors earlier in the software development lifecycle (SDLC), which reduces cost and saves time, something Gene addressed in his webinar.
“One of the things that I try to highlight in The Phoenix Project is that, at one point in time, maybe a decade or two ago, it was acceptable for us to wait six, eight months for an environment [and] three, four months for a QA cycle to be over,” he recalled. “Regardless of [your] industry…those days are over [and] that really forces all of us to up our game.”
Increased collaboration
By streamlining DevOps processes through Jobs-as-Code, organizations can improve collaboration by bringing development and operations processes into a single end-to-end view across the entire technology estate. This breaks down the traditional environment and infrastructure silos.
AI/ML workflow orchestration
Application and data workflow orchestration is the process of automating and orchestrating complex, interdependent application workflows and data pipelines to deliver critical business services in production. Artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) add new capabilities such as predictive analytics that spot issues and behaviors ahead of time.
AI/ML is also driving DataOps, which applies agile engineering and DevOps best practices to data management to yield business value from data insights. Automation and orchestration are the core principles that help put data pipelines into production, at scale, as standalone services or embedded into larger, more complex business service workflows.
Leveraging Control-M for Jobs-as-Code
Control-M and BMC Helix Control-M, BMC’s on-premises and software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based application and data workflow orchestration platforms, deliver on each of the topic areas above. Control-M and BMC Helix Control-M use the Jobs-as-Code approach with REST APIs and JSON, within the continuous integration and continuous development (CI/CD) toolchain, to make workflows version-controlled, testable, and maintainable so developers and DevOps engineers can collaborate seamlessly.
In fact, the solution’s Automation API and support for the Jobs-as-Code approach were highlighted in the EMA Radar Report for Workload Automation: Q4 2021, where Control-M was named a Value Leader and achieved the overall highest score among the vendors evaluated.
“The Automation API has opened up a world of possibilities for us, including the ability to create workflows on-demand using traditional DevOps tools.”—Sr. Automation Engineer
With Control-M and BMC Helix Control-M, organizations can create, deploy, and run application and data workflows at scale, in production, to achieve the business outcomes they want, while freeing developers to rededicate their efforts toward application improvements and innovations that help grow the business.
“We do not miss any SLAs, as we get to know the issue well in advance. It is the topmost service that has helped us provide better solutions for the business.”—Control-M administrator
As Gene says, “DevOps…enables us to increase our ability to deliver applications and services quickly and safely [and] enable rapid experimentation and innovation. That’s what we need to deliver value as quickly as possible to our customers, without sacrificing security, reliability, and stability.”
Learn more about Jobs-as-Code at jobsascode.io, Control-M at bmc.com/controlm, and BMC Helix Control-M at bmc.com/helixcontrolm.
These postings are my own and do not necessarily represent BMC's position, strategies, or opinion.
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