Outsourcing DevOps: Are You Aware Of The Pros And Cons?

When you consider all of the obstacles associated with building your DevOps team, outsourcing DevOps as a managed service makes great sense, particularly for startups and entrepreneurs. As with marketing, graphic design, and legal counsel, outsourcing provides specialized skills without the financial and administrative burdens of bringing these services in-house.

Despite this, Managed DevOps is not always the best option. This blog discusses the potential drawbacks of outsourcing DevOps as well as five significant benefits.

3 Indications Outsourcing DevOps May Not Be For You

Before deciding that Managed DevOps is the best option for your business, consider whether any of the following disadvantages apply:

1. You Have Exclusive Access To Full-Time Staff

If you hire your team, you have access to more than 40 hours of their time each week, and you decide when and how to utilize their skills. This is likely not a problem for startups and entrepreneurs, but it may be advantageous for larger companies to create their DevOps teams in-house.

If your company has 150 employees and is projected to grow to 500 or more, you should consider building DevOps in-house. At that point, your infrastructure will have grown to such a size that you will require individuals to own different portions of it.

2. It is more difficult to incorporate DevOps into your culture

In general, hiring DevOps professionals allows you to better incorporate them into your company's culture. Other team members may be happier to partner with full-time DevOps employees than with outsourced personnel.

Nonetheless, this integration is a double-edged sword. Incorporating DevOps experts into your culture becomes a liability, not an asset, if your organization lacks a culture that resonates with DevOps and in which junior employees have a voice in essential project-forwarding decisions. Before deciding to build your team, you may also want to consider strategies for integrating outsourced individuals into your organization.

3. Software Architecture Is Among Your Key Differentiators In The Market

Software architecture is an important differentiator for some businesses. If the mechanics of delivery are crucial to your company's operations, it may make sense to undertake the challenge of developing a strong internal DevOps team.

DevOps should be treated as a managed service and outsourced if cloud architecture and delivery knowledge are tangential to your organization.

5 Benefits Of Outsourcing DevOps

Unless you have a clear need to create a DevOps team in-house, your company stands to gain significantly from an outsourcing strategy. These advantages include:

1. Immediate, Continuous Access To Leading DevOps Talent

If cloud software architecture is not a core component of your business model, it is difficult to recruit the most talented DevOps engineers. Since their entire mission is aligned with DevOps, a reputable Managed DevOps provider has the right company culture and resources to attract – and retain – the top talent. Outsourcing with such a provider improves your capabilities while removing many of the difficulties associated with building your team.

2. Expertise at a Reduced Price

With outsourced DevOps, you receive a fully-functional DevOps team with diverse skill sets for a fraction of the cost of hiring even one full-time employee. This team offers the DevOps and cloud infrastructure expertise you require, without requiring a time- and resource-intensive in-house team.

3. The vendor offers a robust DevOps culture

The best DevOps engineers want to be a part of a great team, interacting with one another like a sports team or a killer band. If you hire a DevOps engineer on your own, that individual will not have peers to rely on if they become stuck. A Managed DevOps provider offers a larger pool for peer-to-peer education and mentoring, which fosters strong team dynamics and increases the intelligence and effectiveness of individual engineers.

4. Adaptability To Identify The Ideal Fit

There is no issue if an outsourced vendor sends you a DevOps engineer who appears to be a poor fit or lacks a crucial skill. You simply request the vendor to find someone else. With a full-time employee, such flexibility is unavailable. Discovering a more suitable engineer would necessitate spending additional time and money on termination, severance, and legal problems, as well as restarting the hiring process.

5. Managing The Costs And Dangers Of Technology R&D

DevOps engineers and Solutions Architects must continuously experiment to keep your architecture robust and scalable and to provide your business with technological and financial advantages. They must maintain their skills through ongoing learning and play.

You would have to pay an in-house team to experiment on your product or conduct additional research and development (R&D). You receive the benefits of DevOps experimentation at a fraction of the cost through outsourcing because you are not paying for that time directly.

Managed DevOps offers many companies the necessary expertise without the burden of hiring and maintaining an in-house team. Consequently, you have more time and resources to devote to what truly matters: building your business.