Why CIOs Prefer Azure DevOps for Custom Development Projects

Introduction

To thrive in today’s environment, modern organizations need an IT infrastructure that can deliver agility, speed to innovate, boost collaboration, and maximum visibility in product engineering. To achieve this level of efficiency, business leaders and C-level executives are , from software development frameworks to information management systems. To accelerate the speed-to-market, these leaders are now avoiding conventional processes and embracing a revolutionary methodology—Azure DevOps for Custom Development Projects.

IT leaders are moving forward by embracing new approaches to automate their end-to-end DevOps processes, dismantle siloed infrastructure components, and make use of intelligent DevOps platforms like Azure DevOps. The end goal is to achieve an agile and efficient development process without sacrificing security posture, 24/7 availability, or a collaborative culture. This blog is for you if:

  • You lead development teams and are responsible for making decisions on tools and technology for your organization.
  • You need to invest in DevOps technology that meets company objectives while simultaneously increasing developer productivity and satisfaction.
  • You’re curious about how other businesses are addressing problems that are comparable to your own.

Let’s dive into how Azure DevOps for custom development projects can transform your software development, software delivery, and project collaboration.

How Azure DevOps Meets the Needs of C-Level Executives

Azure DevOps is an investment that will significantly improve software development outcomes from a commercial standpoint. By finding the ideal balance throughout the IT value chain, from business processes to software development teams, quality assurance engineers, and IT infrastructure operations, Azure DevOps offers a smooth path to universal digitalization. These advantages multiply when the approach is adopted as an outlook and becomes a part of your culture. Azure DevOps has been gaining significant traction in recent years. As a matter of fact:

  • In 2023, Microsoft Azure DevOps Server was adopted by over 10695 businesses, with the majority of (60.76%) clients from the United States.
  • The user threshold of Azure DevOps is close to reaching 1 billion users (with 722.2 million users, as reported by Azure Active Directory.)
  • During the first quarter of 2023, Microsoft Azure experienced a 31% increase in revenue.

“Delivering software quickly, reliably, and safely is at the heart of technology transformation and organizational performance,” the Accelerate State of DevOps 2019 Report reported after conducting a worldwide survey of 31,000 C-suite executives.

If you are curious to see why Azure DevOps for custom development projects is the go-to-solution for top leaders like you, here’s why:

  • Integration Complexity: CIOs are searching for solutions that will simplify workflows, cut complexity, and connect easily with current systems. Azure DevOps seamlessly merges with an organization’s existing workflows, thereby reducing operational friction and boosting productivity.
  • Security and Compliance: Managing the safety and compliance of development projects is a major issue due to the rise in cyber threats and stringent regulatory requirements, particularly in sectors like healthcare and finance. Azure DevOps provides robust security features and compliance controls to meet stringent standards.
  • Speed to Market: CIOs look for methodologies and techniques that can reduce development cycles without sacrificing quality. Azure DevOps stands out by enabling rapid software development and deployment through its CI/CD pipelines.
  • Scalability Issues: CIOs & CTOs need systems that will support emerging technologies, handle growing loads, and fulfill present demands. Azure DevOps scales alongside your business, managing increased loads and seamlessly integrating emerging technologies.
  • Vendor Lock-in Issues: There is a chance that your development ecosystem may become overly reliant on a vendor’s ecosystem. CIOs want their DevOps solutions to be flexible, allowing them to interface with a multitude of other services and switch to other platforms if needed. Azure DevOps stands out for its flexibility by allowing integration with multiple services and platforms, giving businesses the freedom to choose the best tools for their needs.

Bonus read: Azure DevOps Vs. Jira: An Executive’s Dilemma

Top Azure DevOps Benefits: Why Choosing Azure DevOps for Custom Development Projects Is a Smarter Approach

These are the primary advantages of Azure DevOps that make it a superior option for developing and implementing apps for custom development projects when compared to other platforms.

1. Smooth Integration with Azure Tools and Services:

With its extensive toolchain, the platform enables easy integration of Azure DevOps with a wide range of tools and services. This DevOps toolkit extension offers a unified application deployment ecosystem, enabling the development team to best leverage Azure’s capabilities to meet specific project requirements.

2. Seamless Automation with Azure Pipelines:

Despite automation being the foundation of the entire software development process, businesses frequently find it difficult to increase efficiency and improve the standard of software delivery. Azure pipelines are how Azure DevOps overcomes this obstacle. It has a comprehensive feature set that guarantees full support for testing, build automation, and continuous release management. When someone files in code changes, the SDLC team can instantly define build agents and automate run test tasks by using Azure pipelines to establish workflows. As a result, Kubernetes or containers are seamlessly supported during Continuous Delivery (CD) and Continuous Integration (CI).

3. Enhanced Source Control via Azure Repo:

Azure Repos has made codebase management simpler. A collection of version control tools fuels this intelligent version control system. By allowing code collaboration, merging, and testing of implemented changes in the codebase, Azure Repo facilitates shorter release times by delivering the changes into production. And that’s just the start! 

With features like collaborative pull requests and advanced file management, developers in the software development ecosystem can manage files within folders, branches, and repositories in both Git and Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC) systems when utilizing Azure’s code repository management tool.

4. Using Azure Artifacts to Manage Components and Exchange Code:

With just one click, developers can build, store, and distribute packages (fully integrated development artifacts) inside their CI/CD pipelines with Azure Artifacts, an effective addition to Azure DevOps abilities. Product engineering professionals can effectively handle all of their dependencies linked to component management and code sharing from open domains and private sources with the use of this package management functionality, whether they are using Maven, npm, NuGet, or Python.

5. Implementing Azure Boards to Increase Visibility and Traceability:

Agile transformation is essential for success if you want to keep up with the quick-paced demands of the software development industry. However, the roadmap for adopting Agile is seldom simple and calls for a lot of work. With its drag-and-drop sprint feature, Azure Boards simplifies the Agile transformation process from start to finish. Tracking tasks across Agile, Scrum, and Kanban boards helps software development teams get maximum visibility. With its multitude of customizable and interactive capabilities, Azure Boards offers native support for end-to-end traceability over backlogs through personalized team dashboards. Using robust analytics features and dashboard widgets, it assists the SDLC team in managing sprints, stand-ups, and meeting schedules while gaining important project insights from planning to product delivery.

Explore our Custom Development Services.

Proven Performance: Azure DevOps' Impact on Business Outcomes

In the efforts to accelerate developer productivity using Azure DevOps and Microsoft Azure environments, this is how two global companies found the right tools to empower developers and boost their productivity:

1. Vodafone:

“Your ability to respond, react, to stay relevant, to innovate, and to compete comes down to your ability to release value to your customers as frequently as possible. That’s why Azure DevOps is such an important underpinning for business success and for cultural change. It really has revolutionized how we work.”

Ben Connolly Global Head of Cloud Engineering and Head of Digital Engineering UK, Vodafone.

Outcomes:

After implementing GitHub and Azure DevOps services, Vodafone experienced significant transformation in their once-siloed testing teams. These teams can now efficiently collaborate, deliver valuable projects, and speed up the deployment using self-service tools, open-source tech, less complex integrations, and DevOps practices.

Here are some quantifiable outcomes that might interest you in the journey to adopt Azure DevOps for custom development projects: 

Vodafone dev teams accelerated their release frequency and improvements in release quality.

  • Increased frequency and quality of releases: Their multinational engineering team can now produce 500 monthly releases instead of just five annually.
  • Enhanced productivity of developers without an increase in the workforce headcount: The web engineering team at Vodafone cut downtime by 40% via automating and reusing more than 200 web components’ global code. GitHub with Azure DevOps allowed the app engineering team to achieve a 50 percent decrease in code faults/reworks and a 50 percent gain in time savings.
  • Increased developer productivity through code sharing.
Infographics show the real-world case study success using Azure DevOps for custom development

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2. Gjensidige:

Gjensidige successfully created an innovative DevSecOps solution for their application platform, enabling their dev and security teams to interact and share security responsibilities. They used a comprehensive set of solution components from Azure DevOps and GitHub.

Outcomes:

  • Developed a unified DevSecOps system for safe app development.
  • Removed gaps between the security and development teams.
  • Integrated security into the processes of developers.

“In the past, security issues were often caught at the end of the development process, where they took a lot more time to fix. Today, with automated security controls embedded into their workflows, developers get instant feedback and can fix things right away.” – Rida Aatif, Head of the Cloud Platform and Infrastructure Team.

Streamline Azure DevOps for Custom Development with AlphaBOLD's Expert DevOps Consulting

Infographics show the AlphaBOLD's exeprtise in Azure DevOps Custom Development

Our team at AlphaBOLD assists you in transforming into an Agile organization by incorporating Continuous Delivery throughout your entire development process, regardless of the platform, language, or cloud. We optimize the advantages of Azure DevOps for custom development projects by automating, standardizing, and centrally orchestrating all required steps within the SDLCs. 

In addition to accelerating product releases, AlphaBOLD executes a rigorous and continuous improvement program. We also use Azure DevOps’ intelligent integration capabilities to improve customer experience, lower technical debt, increase uptime, and decrease product time-to-market.

This is what our continuous improvement process for DevOps consulting looks like: 

By encouraging innovation, accelerating time to market, and enhancing client satisfaction, we encourage development with our vast expertise in providing Microsoft Azure DevOps Consulting & Services.

Find out more about our leading-edge Azure DevOps Consulting Services.

Infographics show the continuous improvement process for DevOps consulting

Move Beyond Manual Practices and Automate your Software Delivery with Microsoft Azure DevOps!

With our Microsoft Azure DevOps Consulting capabilities, we can help you build a solution that fits your organization. Request a consultation to connect with our team and understand how to do it!

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Conclusion

With Azure DevOps, IT leaders have a partner who shares their vision and drives their teams toward exceptional performance and happiness as they automate their DevOps processes and leverage intelligent platforms. The road ahead looks bright for those prepared to go beyond traditional procedures and utilize capabilities of Azure DevOps for custom development projects. This platform is a revolutionary instrument that changes the fundamental structure of software creation and distribution, opening the door for the next wave of digital excellence.

All you need is a managed services partner like AlphaBOLD, who can help you guide your way to an exceptional Azure DevOps implementation and software delivery.

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