Enterprise DevOps: Leverage ESM data to improve speed and agility

It’s no exaggeration to say that modern enterprises run on DevOps.

Rapidly moving markets and constantly changing business conditions require development teams to work closely with operations and end-users in a flexible, agile manner. It’s the only way they can quickly and iteratively deploy high-quality applications that effectively address pressing needs. And just as DevOps is a process framework that iterates to produce better software over time, the process itself should also improve. Continuous improvement and continuous development (CI/CD) cycles are the DevOps way of life.

Enterprise service management (ESM) evolved out of IT service management (ITSM) automated processes for the IT help desk to speed resolution, increase efficiency, and improve satisfaction among those seeking assistance. Recognizing that other lines of business, in areas such as HR and customer support, could also benefit from the same kind of automation that worked so well in ITSM, ESM was born. DevOps teams can leverage ESM data to increase agility and velocity in the spirit of continuous improvement.

How? One way is by leveraging all the data harnessed by ESM for improved visibility and insight into the relationships and interdependencies across complex enterprise systems. DevOps, after all, was originally created by developers working in small startups and open-source vendors. These organizations didn’t have a ton of legacy technologies to deal with, and while it’s a stretch to say that their environments were simple to understand, they were certainly not anywhere near as complex as those of contemporary large enterprises. As a result, it’s difficult for DevOps teams to go beyond small projects with clear boundaries to deliver innovations for complicated, critical services. Moving fast and breaking things may work for a startup, but an enterprise can’t afford to break the services on which the business depends.

ESM can help enterprise DevOps teams gain the same agility and power as startup teams. To illustrate, let’s look at how BMC Helix ESM improves DevOps agility and velocity.

First, dynamic service modeling with BMC Helix enables the DevOps team to know exactly which services are currently running within the infrastructure, so they’re never guessing, spending cycles on discovery, or working off outdated information in a constantly evolving environment. Delivering rapid innovation for mainstream services is impossible without first knowing what’s already there.

But discovering services is only half the battle because these services are highly interdependent and interactive. BMC Helix IT Service Management and BMC Helix Operations Management with AIOps unify ESM data with artificial intelligence to provide insight into the risks that any changes may entail. This way, DevOps teams can move fast to deliver new capabilities while mitigating the risk of breaking things because they’ll know how DevOps-managed services will interact with the larger IT environment.  

Finally, BMC Helix aligns ServiceOps with DevOps tooling in real-time for more adaptive, agile change and release management by reducing handoffs and facilitating transparent collaboration with integrated, out-of-the-box service blueprints and dashboards. Everyone in the development and operations chain has a single view of the truth and a unified workflow to avoid bottlenecks and misunderstandings, and innovation can continue seamlessly to move the business forward.

“Everyone in the enterprise wants the agility of startup development teams, but enterprise complexity makes that difficult to accomplish,” said Jon Stevens-Hall, Principal Product Manager for BMC Helix. “BMC Helix ESM gives DevOps teams the real-time visibility into data and relationships across different topology models and layers throughout the stack to  accelerate development cycles with the confidence that critical services won’t be negatively impacted.”

Learn more about BMC Helix’s transformational potential.

Automation