Continuous integration/continuous delivery[1] (CI/CD) is one of those things that promises to make Agile a reality, but requires a fairly thorough transformation in the workflows of IT organizations. (Why isn't it called "continuous improvement/continuous delivery?" Oh well.) Tellingly, the people in corner offices are pushing hard for it, while developers and IT staffers are holding back.
Photo: Joe McKendrick
That is one of the takeaways from a recent survey[2] of 600 IT executives and professionals, conducted by CloudFoundry, which finds increasing adoption of newer techniques and technologies, from PaaS to containers to serverless computing.
Interestingly, the survey finds, there's a great deal more interest in CI/CD among managers than among developers or IT staff members. For example, 61 percent of the top executives and 67 percent of the IT managers see CI/CD as the most important initiative going forward over the next two years, compared to 36 percent of developers and 45 percent of architects. "CEOs, CIOs, CTOs, line of business leaders, and IT managers disproportionately see CI/CD as central to their two-year plans, suggesting a desire to change the culture and workflow for how software development and deployment occur," the survey's authors suggest.
The survey also finds 57 percent preferring a mix of cloud-native applications and refactoring of legacy applications when building new applications or functions. There's more of this mixing-and-matching taking place, up nine percentage points over the previous survey last year.
Overall, 77 percent are using or evaluating Platforms-as-a-Service (PaaS), 72 percent are using or evaluating containers and 46 percent are using or evaluating serverless computing. More than a third (39 percent) are using a combination of all three technologies together.
The survey finds IT teams