INTRODUCTION It seems that everyone in IT these days is talking about DevOps. From conferences to articles and books, the term DevOps has taken the IT world by storm. The buzz is understandable, as many IT groups are looking for a way out of the morass of delayed projects, questionable quality and missed deliveries in which they often find themselves. It’s clear that DevOps has the potential to address the many challenges that IT faces. Organizations that have embraced DevOps – including companies such as Etsy, Netflix, Target, Walmart, Amazon and 1 Facebook have shown that DevOps principles can lead to competitive differentiation by enabling teams to deliver higher quality software at the speed of ideas. As a result, it’s not a stretch to say that DevOps is becoming the industry standard for software development. With all this excitement, though, comes a sneaking suspicion that not everyone is talking about the same thing when they talk about DevOps. This suspicion is reinforced by CTOs who claim they are “doing” DevOps or vendors selling DevOps tools that magically enable you to “do” DevOps. It can be helpful to reconcile the many interpretations of DevOps that muddy the water and potentially inhibit adoption. Since the earliest days of DevOps, debates about what DevOps is have existed. Fortunately, over the past few years there appears to be a growing consensus. In this whitepaper, we take a look at: » What DevOps is » Why you must care about it (hint: your business depends on it), and » Whether it’s a passing fad or here to stay What is DevOps? 3