Advantages of using Azure DevOps Services
Microsoft Azure DevOps is the best tool for rapidly developing & deploying applications and software in-house to enhancing operational efficiency and delivering superior customer experiences.
Microsoft Azure has significantly grown its customer base, especially among small and medium businesses (SMBs). As of 2021, it has over 145 million active users compared to 75 million active users in 2020. Some of the key reasons for its exponential growth are its versatility and cost-effectiveness.
Azure DevOps is among the many extensions of its various services that focus on smart planning and improving collaboration among teams to provide the best customer experience. In this blog, we are inspecting DevOps as a whole, what Azure DevOps is, and the advantages of using Azure DevOps services for your business.
Make sure to read the blog till the end to learn about the various tools from Azure DevOps that make the development process even more efficient.
What is DevOps?
DevOps, by definition, refers to people, frameworks, processes, and technology that enhances an organization’s ability to rapidly develop and deliver applications and service. Moreover, DevOps is also a guiding principle for technology and delivery of business value that focuses on improving products/services and evolving their capabilities for customers at a greater speed than is achieved through traditional software development and infrastructure management processes.
From an enterprise team’s perspective, DevOps allows departments like IT development, quality management, and security to work collaboratively and provide the best products and services for final purchase. Before DevOps, these departments used to work in silos with little to no interaction with each other. The DevOps system helps organizations bring these departments together for better interaction and better solutions for businesses.
The key benefit of DevOps culture is high-performance business practices and tools that drive better collaboration among departments. Designing better products and enhancing customer experience becomes so much efficient with agile development to achieve business goals.
With that brief refresher on DevOps, let’s look at how Azure DevOps helps organizations in streamlining and managing application development in the best possible way.
What are Azure DevOps services
Microsoft Azure DevOps helps organizations to make software development more agile, accurate and secured with collaborating teams, processes, and technologies to maintain the dynamic software development life cycle. It provides services like version control, reporting, requirements management, project management, automated builds, testing and release management so that organizations can efficiently design a robust application on a digital platform.
Here’s how Azure DevOps helps you manage the software development life cycle.
The most prominent use case for Azure DevOps is for deploying on-premise software and applications using its cloud computing platform. With various useful DevOps services working in tandem with a cloud system, it ensures unlimited scalability and efficiency at all times.
But what are these Azure DevOps services that make it so special? Let’s take a look.
Services offered with Azure DevOps
Azure Boards
Azure boards work as an excellent planning tool with interactive backlog management powered by customizable Kanban boards. Developers can store their application ideas, from minor updates to major overhauls in the system, in Azure boards with efficient traceability.
Azure Pipelines
Azure Pipelines help you streamline your software development by creating an online platform to build, test, and deploy an application in the language of choice. For businesses looking for agile software development on a secure platform before its widespread application, Azure Pipelines work as CI/CD for any platform.
Additionally, you can run these applications using Linux, Windows, and macOS and deploy the final applications on Kubernetes or any individual host.
Azure Repos
Azure Repos adds unprecedented flexibility to your coding by enabling a collaborative development system. It’s a powerful Git hosting platform with efficient code review to find errors early on. With a social media-like communication system, developers can communicate efficiently to solve technical issues in programming.
To sum it up, it works as a free repository for programming ideas, where collaborative development takes the front seat.
Azure Test Plans
Testing is the most crucial part of application development. Azure test plans help you simplify the process by providing a manual and exploratory testing platform. It allows you to micro-manage the entire developing process at every stage. User can identify the errors in coding and notify it to others to take immediate actions.
A simple and interactive interface of Azure Test Plans helps you design your software compatible with across web and desktops throughout your organization.
Azure Artifacts
Azure Artifacts offers a universal package repository where developers can share crucial programming tools like Python, NuGet, npm, and Maven throughout your team using public and private sources. With so many options for designing business applications, organizations get limitless flexibility and control over software development using any programming tool of their choice. Moreover, you can also integrate these packages in your CI/CD pipelines to further improve the ease and scalability of DevOps processes.
Now that we’ve covered the key factors you must know about Azure DevOps, let’s look at its various advantages for your business.
Advantages of Azure DevOps
- Access to the latest features: Once Azure DevOps get deployed in your system, you don’t have to worry about what’s new, as DevOps provides access to new technology every three weeks.
- Flexibility: All the DevOps tools mentioned above ensure limitless flexibility for your application development. It’s the biggest reason why Azure DevOps is ideal for businesses of all sizes.
- Works with multiple cloud systems: Azure DevOps is not limited to Azure cloud only, as you can run it with equal efficiency on AWS and Google Cloud services as well.
- Don’t worry about upgrades: Being a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform, users don’t have to worry about constant upgrades to the system, which makes it ideal for companies that use the CI/CD model for app development.
Build your end-to-end Azure infrastructure
Microsoft Azure DevOps is a valuable asset for businesses that seek a quality DevOps system to provide an exceptional experience for users and customers alike. For SMBs, Azure DevOps can be a game-changer with efficient programming that promotes a collaborative work culture.
If you’re planning to get started with a robust DevOps infrastructure, VBeyond Digital is more than happy to help you with our expertise in Azure cloud systems and DevOps management.
