DevOps is a mix of two words Dev and Ops. “Dev” represents development teams and “Ops” represent operational teams. DevOps at its core is culture. DevOps is neither a tool nor a product. It is an approach in which the development and operations teams blend as one unit to work for one purpose and achieve the best results.

Computing can be understood as “transforming”, as computing transforms input into outputs based on the program in it. We feed in to get what we want using that electro-electronic-mechanical device which we simply call as a computer.

DevOps helps in moving the business forward in ever increasing volatile, diverse and complex business environment. It is not about doing things in a particular way. Through DevOps, technology becomes a strategic advantage as releases are sped up. Organizations using DevOps practices deploy more and recover from failure with minimized downtime. This is essential as rapid development, deployment and reliable, high-performance services delivery are given and expected.

DevOps offer proven benefits to companies, many possibilities, tremendous potential and flexibility. However, making it work and realizing all the benefits requires several sensitivities and capacities.

Accurate situational assessment is a necessity. One has to assess business context, objectives, application architectures, infrastructure architectures, and organizational culture and goals for DevOps to realize its full potential. Development and operations teams need to complement each other, understand and act like one blended team while following a clear path with well-defined processes and checklists. As a result, DevOps enables faster, more frequent and predictable software deployments and improvements, building better-quality software more with more reliability. Organizations move from irregular to regular and incremental to substantial improvements in software releases.

Streamlined processes, standardized and automated procedures for infrastructure deployment, increased pace of innovation, reduced times to market and improved operational efficiency are expected benefits besides improvement in organizational culture. All these benefits accrue when the development and operations teams work as one unit.

DevOps is here to stay and is becoming a mainstream fact, and will soon become a new normal. Increasing number of job opportunities is inevitable as large organizations are getting on board with DevOps and also is being adopted by increasingly companies. However, some consider it is dead due to cloud in other words specifically managed services.

Managed services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and other service providers are taking care of installing databases and backing up, redundancy and uptime thus simplified work and reduced complexity on the developer end which helped them to focus on what counts - software development.

One caveat, DevOps isn’t for everyone. It calls for curiosity and willingness to cross-train outside one’s own technical comfort zone and expects you to have higher social skills. One has to spend effort, time and understand teams as you need to act as a trusted bridge between teams and their goals and perceptions. DevOps expects you to be wider than deeper.

You gain exposure, experience and expertise in different roles and contexts. As a DevOps professional you gain the knack to see the big picture. How various sides such as Development, Operations, QA, Sales, Product teams and processes, customers, and competitors and their needs, and constraints interact and influence each other will also be witnessed by you. Your familiarity with all sides and knowledge of how they all work together will help you to achieve the organization set goals.

DevOps will help your career as you cannot be "boxed in" or pigeonholed. It nudges you to learn and integrate new technologies and skills that are transferable and applicable elsewhere. You understand the business better, and your sector understanding takes a different color altogether. Thus, you are valuable to companies.