DevOps Outsourcing: How It Can Benefit You? Why Consider It?

High-quality service is important in the modern market, and to ensure so, many businesses take the route of DevOps outsourcing. It requires high collaboration and teams that know how to carry out high-functioning DevOps integrations can achieve milestones in the industry.

Today, we will discuss everything you should know about DevOps outsourcing and how to take your organization to the next level with one of the most sophisticated outsourcing methods.

Definition of DevOps Outsourcing

DevOps is a culture that emphasizes collaborative development through cultivating a cohesive culture and implementing practices that shorten the software development life cycle (SDLC).

DevOps promotes collaboration between the developers and the users to speed up the development process of new software.

Difference Between In-House And Outsourced DevOps Teams

While you can hire an in-house DevOps team the traditional way, you can also outsource a DevOps team through a trusted vendor. While the core functionality remains the same, both these devops team types have their own set of pros and cons.

Pros and Cons of In-House DevOps Team

Pros	Cons
Complete control over the entire development process	More expensive in terms of office costs, additional perks, and benefits
Adding resources is a controlled-cost process	Recruitment is tough
Allows you to build your infrastructure with the tools and people you need	It takes a lot of time to build an infrastructure from scratch
	The team gets frequently sidetracked by internal tasks, losing momentum.
	In-house developers work within limitations regarding objectives and working conditions, limiting their potential growth.

Pros and Cons of Remote DevOps Team

Pros	Cons
Lets you access top-tier talents at reasonable pricing	More complex deployments are rather expensive
Team members are experienced in working with different projects, giving them more experience handling any situation.	Everything depends on the provider; if the provider is gone, so is your team.
Lower risk of employee attrition with low turnover rates	Requires communication setup from scratch, and each team member has to develop good work relations with each other
Easy to upscale or downscale according to current requirements
The team has better morale and offers great final products.
Outsourced teams always do their best to achieve the results defined by contracts.

Benefits of DevOps Outsourcing

1. Much Cheaper Than Hiring An In-House DevOps Specialist

Hiring an in-house DevOps specialist can cost you an arm and a leg, even if you’re a large enterprise. As of 2023, the average salary of an in-house DevOps specialist is #130,000/ year, or $62.50/ hr.

As you can see, if you’re a small business, hiring an in-house specialist can be taxing on your budget (pun intended). But when hiring from the global talent pool, you get more options for hiring and for a lesser cost.

2. You Get A Better Product In A Shorter Time

Outsourced DevOps specialists are the most suitable for companies that have already integrated DevOps culture into their everyday systems. If you own such a company, the outsourced team can get to continuous development, testing, and iterations to provide you with a better product in no time.

3. Reduces Overall Risk of Technology And IT Expenses

DevOps engineers perform constant experiments to find the best option for success, resulting in high resource consumption and valuable development time.

If you have an in-house team of DevOps specialists, you end up paying for all the experimentation from your budget. But when you’re outsourcing, the vendor and the team take on the experimentation’s financial risks, saving you the risk of both technology and budget expenses.

4. The Vendor Offers The Most Suitable Options To Match The Existing Culture

The goal of a good DevOps team is to always work in tandem, similar to a sports team, where the equal contribution of all members is equally important.

When a vendor takes over your project, the entire outsourced team will do a thorough analysis of your business by going through every aspect and then decide on a development strategy that is the most efficient.

5. Higher Flexibility Regarding Team Infrastructure

When partnering with a vendor, swapping out team members is easy if you find a particular team member unfitting with your business practices or development process. Finding a better fit for your team in the traditional method would cost you a ton of time and other resources.

With DevOps outsourcing, you can simply swap a more fitting team member from your vendor, and the new member can immediately continue the project.

Steps To Make DevOps Outsourcing Easy

1. Define Objectives For The DevOps Team

It always starts with deciding what you wish to achieve by outsourcing DevOps. While cost-cutting is one of the prime objectives of outsourcing, it’s not the only goal. Your business should always look forward to gaining business benefits from the increased agility and productivity.

When you identify the key areas you want to improve with DevOps, it can help you choose the right vendor that can help you meet business-specific KPIs, such as

• 24/7 support
• Big data
• Cost audit
• Data analytics.
• Scalability
• Migration

2. Build A Suitable Governance Framework

DevOps highly relies on extensive collaboration. To ensure so, you must create a governance framework that outlines all the important people, processes, and necessary tech stack to achieve the desired results.

With a ready governance framework readied by the client, the DevOps vendor and the outsourced team can bring unique external perspectives to the client company.

3. Evaluate The Right Vendor For The Job

Successful outsourcing relies on making the right choice in terms of your outsourcing partner. You should always perform thorough research before making the final call. Here’s a checklist for you to follow when performing said research:

• Analyze their digital footprints
• Analyze reviews and testimonials
• Ask for referrals
• Conduct thorough background research
• Find certifications and recognitions
• Inspect industry verticals of their services
• View case studies
• Verify the technical expertise

4. Analyze the Communication Skills of The Vendor

Communication is the key to a successful project, which applies to every outsourcing model, including DevOps. You can check the communication skills of your vendor by contacting them through different channels and checking the professionalism and response time in their answers.

For a more accurate decision, ask yourself the following questions:

• Are they prompt and timely in their interactions?
• Can you use the tracking software properly on your site?
• Have any previous clients of the vendor faced problems with communication and interaction?
• How does the vendor respond to due diligence questions?
• How open are they to your suggestions?
• How will they respond to your request and the time taken to handle them?
• What tools will they use to plan and manage tasks?

5. Create Your Contract And Start Working

Now that you’ve gone through all the steps beforehand and made a final selection, it’s time to create an official contract for both parties to collaborate and work together. DevOps with agile doesn’t come with a definitive scope; it utilizes different approaches to the scoping process.

Once both parties have agreed on the project’s scope and finalized the contract, it’s time to start working on your dream project.

Signs That DevOps Outsourcing May Not Be For You

1. You Already Have A Full-Time Employee/ Team

If you already have a dedicated team of DevOps professionals, you’re already getting to assign them to necessary tasks and have complete governance over the entire team.

Hiring in-house DevOps teams is a better option for larger companies. Though the option is highly expensive, you can’t spare more attention outside of your organization when you already have a larger team working by your side.

2. DevOps Culture Is Not Compatible With Your Current Workplace Culture

Not every workplace contains the same work ethics and culture, and there can be a high possibility that the DevOps culture simply isn’t suitable for your current business model and workplace culture.

DevOps integration is a highly complicated process; transforming the workplace can take years. The process is a double-edged sword: while it can provide you with additional agility and productivity, many employees refusing to work in the new workplace conditions can result in project delays and failure.

In that case, integrating DevOps into your work culture becomes more of a liability than an asset. Even with outsourcing, you must thoroughly consider the implications of integrating an outsourced team in your workplace for a consistent relationship.

3. Software Architecture Is The Focus of Your Organization

Software architecture is a vital differentiator for most businesses. If the delivery mechanisms are essential to your business, onboarding an in-house DevOps team is your best choice.

However, if your expertise is in cloud architecture and delivery, then it’s better to treat DevOps as a managed service and outsource it.

To Wrap It All Up

DevOps outsourcing is an affordable way for smaller businesses to bring in the best experts in the industry to collaborate and level the playing field with larger enterprises.

More and more organizations are utilizing the benefits of DevOps outsourcing, so why fall behind? Partner with Impala Intech today, and start your DevOps journey on the right foot today.

FAQ