#1: DevOps Wars

DevOps engineers will divide into two sides - the dark side and the light side. The dark side will operate solely using the force of YAML, GitOps, and configuration-as-code, whereas the light side will embrace the power of user experience with the return of the UI. Automation wars will ensue where the light side will build automation and deployment pipelines in minutes, with the dark side one typo away from failure. DevOps tool vendors will be forced to support both sides to restore a balance between the dark side and the light side, thus allowing both forces to be strong.

#2: Oracle Will Become Irrelevant

Oracle's stock price will be cut in half after missing the Cloud boat, the Kubernetes Train, and the Serverless Plane. AWS, Azure, and GCP will continue to dominate in the Cloud with Oracle continuing to issue press release after press release claiming their Cloud is the best. Salesforce will beat Oracle to all sexy and relevant acquisitions, and the force of MongoDB, DataStax, and Snowflake will redefine what a modern database is - thus cementing Oracle's status as an irrelevant vintage vendor.

#3: Continuous Delivery Will Be Hot

Continuous Delivery will become the hot buzzword of 2019, replacing AI and Machine Learning in 2018 - which formerly replaced microservices in 2017. All DevOps infrastructure vendors will rebrand and claim Continuous Delivery as their core value proposition while continuing to sell the same old infrastructure automation software they've sold for the past 5 years. A new breed of DevOps vendor will emerge in 2019 focused on the application layer, providing deep insight, context, and management capabilities that enable true Continuous Delivery. Actually, that vendor already emerged in 2018... cough.

#4: Observability Will Replace APM

All monitoring vendors will rebrand and jump on the Observability bandwagon in an attempt to differentiate against each other. Analysts will be forced to rename their research papers to Application Performance Observability (APO); however, all required critical capabilities, requirements, vendor descriptions, and features will remain absolutely the same as it was previously with APM. Social media streams and forums will continue to violently debate whether observability is actually different from monitoring, and vice versa.

#5: Traditional IT Operations will disappear

The best performing companies of the foreseeable future will be developer-driven. Developers need to be in the driver’s seat at all times, and in the room when decisions are made. They also need access to and oversight of the kind of budget that their counterparts in Operations have had in the past. IT and operations will exist to support the needs of development and engineering teams; they will be measured on driving developer velocity vs. server availability. Developers in 2019 will gain higher levels of autonomy, with complete operational control and visibility of their production apps.

What DevOps predictions do you have for 2019?

Cheers,
Steve.
@BurtonSays