New systems

In a bid to make life simpler for developers, Trusted Computing Group(TCG)  has released a new API system that helps vendors to utilise the Roots of Trust provided by the Trusted Platform Module (TPM). “This is a really exciting time for TCG as we look to ensure that connected devices work as securely as possible both now and in the future.” said Andreas Fuchs, Co-chair of TCG’s TPM Software Stack Work Group.

Applications to monitor the customer journey

OpenText, Enterprise Information Management (EIM) company this week launched a SaaS application that provides marketing leaders full visibility over their customer’s journey. They have called it Core Experience Insights and in speaking about it, Patricia Nagle, Chief Marketing Officer, OpenText says: “We built Core Experience Insights to give market leaders visibility into their customers’ experiences from the first click to the final purchase decision.”

Reinventing the customer experience

Data authority for hybrid cloud organisation, NetApp, announced a program that offers a range of flexible solutions for customers, whether they choose to build or buy their cloud infrastructure. The firm hopes this will reinvent the customer experience. “In introducing flexible consumption models and automation-focused products, NetApp is making it significantly simpler not only to use its own products and services, but for IT leaders to modernize, monitor and manage the entirety of their infrastructure.”  Said Ashish Nadkarni, vice president of IDC’s Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies Group.

Celebrations

DevOps tool provider, Redgate Software, is celebrating 20 years of operations. In its time, it has grown from providing 1 product to now providing over 30, along with now having over 400 members of staff in 5 offices worldwide. Simon Galbraith, co-founder and CEO notes, “We’ve all been on a journey over the last two decades. The whole industry is moving from big bang releases based on the features companies think users want to daily releases based on what users actually need. Database development has changed too, with the database now being included in DevOps and businesses needing to deliver value quicker while keeping data safe.”

So, what are you waiting for, get the team together, get talking and stay warm.

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Redgate, a firm that specialises in database development, launched its SQL Change Automation 4.0, which has been extended to the free Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). This is the first time the firm has made this move onto this specific studio.

How it helps

SQL Change Management enables developers to automate the DevOps database delivery process by building, testing, and deploying database changes checked into version control, for SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, and Azure SQL Database Managed Instances.

Developers will also have the option of working with the new SSMS extension or in the Microsoft studio, allowing teams to share ideas and collaborate on projects.

“delivering choice”

Robert Farrell, Product Manager, Redgate Software, comments: “Redgate is dedicated to delivering choice to users – letting teams work in the environments and tools that they are most familiar with, reducing learning curves and enabling greater collaboration. The latest version of SQL Change Automation supports this philosophy, extending its capabilities and ensuring that database code quality and automation is at the heart of DevOps processes, bringing stability and speed.”

The company believes that heterogeneous development teams will particularly benefit from the new extension due to the option that both developers and database administrators have to work in their development environment whilst still following DevOps processes when it comes to database changes.

Other features of SQL Change Automation v4 include static code analysis and new data compare options for PowerShell. Static code analysis identifies potential problems with migration scripts to be deployed and warns the user about them, before changes are made to Production, making sure that best practices are being followed.

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In the largest and longest-running research of its kind, the report surveyed 31,000 IT professionals over 6 years, analysing the results annually. The report was named Accelerate State of DevOps Report and was conducted by the DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) group, which was acquired by Google in December 2018.

The investigation was sponsored by the software company, Redgate.

Main findings

Key findings from Accelerate highlight the continuous improvements that the DevOps industry is making.  One of which is that 20% of all teams looked at in the report are classified as “elite” performers, up from 7% last year. It was also found that the highest performers are twice as likely to meet work goals, including profitability, productivity and customer satisfaction.

“Over the past six years the Accelerate State of DevOps Report has become the benchmark for good practice in DevOps, demonstrating the business benefits adoption delivers,” says Kendra Little, DevOps Advocate, Redgate Software. “In 2018 it highlighted the importance of the database to DevOps success, and in 2019 has invaluable advice on the impact of good culture, the cloud, creating communities and change approvals on improved organizational performance.”

Improvements to be made

The Accelerate report also researched what companies needed to do in order to improve. It found the main benefit to companies would be to change approval practices. This is because searching for approval for changes from a higher level resulted in a negative software delivery performance. It was also revealed, however, that approving processes are not associated with lower change failure rates.

The findings of the Accelerate report also imply the need for a change in the role of data professionals. To make improvements to the stability of production systems and to increase the performance of the software delivery process, specialists need to move away from the role as ‘gatekeepers’ in the production environment, the report encourages.

It’s further suggested that to deal with these issues, those in specialist roles should transform into consultants and advisors, who can inspire development teams early in the software development lifecycle and create communities at all levels.

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The organisation hopes that the move will bring them closer to a European customer base and be able to offer more personal service by being physically closer to clients.

Redgate already has offices in Pasadena and Austin in the US, and late last year, the company also opened an office in Brisbane, Australia.

The main aim of the company, which has been named in Fortune 100, is to provide database development solutions for the growing DevOps community. The DevOps solution company also recently developed a partnership in Latin America as well as acquiring Flyway, an open source cross-platform database migration tool.

Berlin and the software industry

Fresh research from Kickstand and PSM&W suggests that Berlin is the fastest-growing centre for technology in Europe. A fund of €436 million is even available to start-ups for early-stage funding. This reflects on Germany currently counting for a quarter of the total software market value.

According to German business advisory, Gruenden, a new enterprise is founded every 20 minutes in Berlin. This could range from the creation of a new healthcare app to the start-up of the latest fin-tech company.

Cassi Roper, VP of Sales at Redgate spoke of her excitement of opening a new office in the German capital. She says, “In technology terms, Berlin is the most exciting place to be in Europe right now. A lot of our existing German customers are in the capital, talented people are being drawn to it, and it gives us easy access to other important countries in Europe.”

Spreading DevOps

Although the new office will start with just 5 members of staff, Redgate hopes this will quickly grow.

The database company believes that the move to Berlin will encourage DevOps to spread across wider parts of Europe.

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To deal with this, Redgate Software has upgraded its  SQL Clone to give quicker and simpler access to databases, allowing for a higher turnaround of copies.

The new design creates smaller database clones by using the virtualization technologies built into the Windows OS. These replicas are the same as the original but come at a much smaller size of around 40MB or 1TB.

Different needs

Redgate does say, however, that different teams will have different needs. So, depending on what they are working on, teams will require varying levels of data masking.

The firm adds that they deal with this issue by letting Database Administrators (DBAs) and Data Architects to have a higher level of access and power over images, clones, and instances. This not only creates more autonomy but also allows for higher levels of DevOps in a team.

They commented that this option also permits developers to fix their own problems with copies and refresh dedicated development environments when needed.

Responding to a need

James Murtagh, Redgate Product Marketing Manager, says: “With more database environments being created to drive dedicated development and continuous integration pipelines, there’s now a need to provision test data more efficiently. At the same time, though, the question of data privacy has to become business as usual and without the right tooling and approach, it will hamper digital transformation initiatives.”

He goes on to add: “SQL Clone’s new Teams feature enables DevOps teams to self-serve not only safe data, but the precise data related to their particular project. That helps them boost efficiency (it’s what DevOps is all about, after all), and progress DevOps and agile development methods hand-in-hand with privacy regulations.”

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Redgate has made a deal with Grupo Babel, a Costa Rican company that already works with Microsoft.

The aim of the partnership is for Grupo Babel to provide the Latin American market with Redgate’s selection of database development tools which allow organisations to effectively embrace the database in their DevOps practices.

The partnership

Grupo Babel has been chosen for its skill set in being able to help customers get more out of their IT infrastructure.

Whilst the British company have spent the past 5 years developing their DevOps practices to create faster speeds of releases through building on its development databases.

Esteban Oviedo Blanco, Grupo Babel CEO, has commented on the partnership. Saying: “Many digital transformation initiatives have a database at the back end supporting front-end applications, and customers now want to include it in their DevOps plans. We’ve been looking for a way to help them do that and Redgate’s portfolio of Microsoft and Oracle solutions make it the perfect vendor to partner with.”

The rise of tech in Latin America

Many people don’t realise how quickly Latin America is expanding in the technology world . It’s thought that by 2022, over half of Latin American GDP will be made digital. Adding to this, IDC predicts that by next year, ICT spending in this part of the world will grow to a huge US$34 billion.

The digital transformation in Central and South America is one that people need to watch. One reason why Redgate chose to work with Grupo Babel is the way that they stand out through being 100% cloud-based.

Cass Lloyd, Redgate Partnerships and Alliances Manager, spoke of the company’s excitement to be working with the Costa Rican firm by saying: “In Europe and North America, new projects often have to work around and work with the large legacy infrastructures in place. In Latin America, the IT footprints are typically smaller, so businesses can introduce the very latest DevOps practices faster and easier.”

Redgate is now continuously looking for more partners in Latin America to grow its DevOps community.

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Quite simply, if it isn’t included in the DevOps workflow, it slows down and hinders the pace of development that can otherwise be achieved.

The topline findings of the report back this up – elite performers deploy code 46 times more frequently, recover from breaking changes 2,604 times faster, and have a 7-times lower change failure rate.

Crucially, the lead time from committing changes to being able to deploy them is less than one hour in the highest performing organisations – and between one and six months in low performers.

That said, achieving a seamless DevOps process that spans both database and development isn’t always straightforward.

Traditionally there has been a gap in mindset and outlook between application developers who are busy building and deploying new code, and database administrators who are tasked with ensuring business-critical databases are always available and the data they contain is safeguarded.

Attitudes are changing, however, driven by the need to work together. In the State of Database DevOps Survey, for example, 58% of respondents reported that collaboration between developers and Database Administrators (DBAs) was either good or great.

So how can you build a similar common understanding and atmosphere of collaboration?

Looking at the analysis in the 2018 Accelerate State of DevOps Report, I think there are four key areas to focus on.

Ensure consistency

Making changes to the database should be part of the DevOps process, and use the same tools and approaches to ensure consistency.

In many ways, database development is where application development was ten years ago, so applying the lessons learned then can help accelerate database DevOps now.

Look at adopting approaches such as configuration management and continuous delivery, with database changes stored as scripts in version control tools, so they can be handled in the same way as application changes.

Use monitoring and observability to learn for the future

Visibility of what is happening across DevOps processes is critical to being able to spot issues early and take preventative action.

This proactive monitoring needs to include the database, providing clear, understandable metrics and reports that can be shared across the wider team.

These should also to be linked to business SLAs in order to achieve a comprehensive picture of your entire infrastructure and what it means to the organisation’s performance.

As well as monitoring tools, the DORA report also highlights a newer category of the tool – observability.

Rather than focusing on pre-set metrics, observability solutions allow teams to actively debug their systems and to look at performance patterns that they’ve not defined in advance.

Companies with monitoring and observability solutions were 1.3 times more likely to be in the leading group when it came to DevOps performance.

The report also found that those companies that scheduled comprehensive debriefs and analysed the data in order to continually improve would probably also be in the elite group when it came to DevOps.

Build a common, open culture

You’d expect the DORA report to find differences between industries when it comes to DevOps performance, with slower moving or more highly regulated industries (such as government) lagging behind more fast-moving sectors, such as retail or tech.

Yet, the data didn’t bear this out – high performers exist in every industry, showing that every team has the potential to deliver successful DevOps.

Rather than the sector, much of the difference in performance can be linked to the overriding culture of the organisation.

For DevOps to achieve its potential, teams have to be open to change, willing to collaborate and share, and committed to continually learn and improve.

To create the right culture for DevOps, leaders need to build trust with their teams, empower them with autonomy and rely on strong communication to ensure that everyone understands their role and overall objectives.

Encourage collaboration and support across the organisation

We’ve touched on the different backgrounds of developers and DBAs. As a DBA myself, I’ve seen how this can manifest itself in terms of mutual suspicion and concerns that DBAs will delay deployments, and developers will cause the database to fail when their latest updates are deployed.

These old ideas need to be put aside, because greater collaboration also brings new opportunities, particularly for DBAs. For example, some organisations now add a DBA to the DevOps team around major releases, so that they can provide advice and coaching to developers.

They may not be doing any work in terms of coding, but instead, are using their knowledge to help ensure the process goes smoothly.

Summary

DORA’s recognition of the importance of the database to DevOps should act as a timely wake-up call to those companies that still see DBAs and developers as operating in separate silos.

Breaking down barriers is essential to introducing successful DevOps and provides opportunities for DBAs to learn and grow their skills while ensuring their organisation stays ahead of the competition through faster, higher quality DevOps performance.

Written by Steve Jones, Redgate Software

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Since the partnership, Redgate has been advising Blue Turtle Technologies on installation and customisation of its software, as well as training.

Both companies enable other firms to introduce advanced development practices like using DevOps “faster and easier”.

‘A wealth of experience’

Cass Lloyd, Redgate’s partner manager, said: “This is our first partner in the region, and we’re excited to have Blue Turtle on board.

“As more and more enterprises move to DevOps to speed up the deployment of changes, updates, and improvements, they can no longer afford for the database to be the bottleneck.

“Blue Turtle has a wealth of experience supporting their customers in application development, and the partnership with Redgate puts them in a unique position to extend the support to include the database alongside the application.”

Written by Leah Alger

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With more than a decade’s experience in the data masking market, Net 2000 replaces sensitive data, like personally identifiable information or credit card and payment details with fictional data.

The database operates the same way for testing and analysis, but is secure and remains perfectly usable for development.

The addition of the data masking solution to Redgate’s portfolio is a natural move for the software company, which counts for 91% of Fortune 100 companies among its customers.

Redgate CTO, Mark Chevertor, said: “Data masking is a great fit with Redgate’s current SQL Server and Oracle database solutions.

“It complements our existing Database DevOps portfolio, and it’s a strong addition to the data governance offering we’re launching in 2018.”

Redgate intends to improve the solution yet further by applying the same industry-leading user experience and design principles that make its products ingeniously simple.

Written from press release by Leah Alger

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