mobile_app_development_final.pdf

DevOps and Enterprise Mobile

FierceMobileITAn eBook from the editors ofOctober 2014

2 Mobile Plus DevOps – A Love Story

3 DevOps and Enterprise Mobile: Two Unstoppable Trends Converge

5 Sponsored Content: Mobile DevOps: A Winning Strategy

6 Getting Started: Many Roads to Mobile DevOps

9 Embrace Automation

11 Mobile Plus DevOps for Better Business-Aligned Design

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Mobile Plus DevOps – A Love Story

DevOps and Enterprise Mobile: Two Unstoppable Trends Converge

Sponsored Content: Mobile DevOps: A Winning Strategy

Getting Started: Many Roads to Mobile DevOps

Embrace Automation

Mobile Plus DevOps for Better Business-Aligned Design

DevOps and Enterprise Mobile // October 2014

FierceMobileITAn eBook from the editors ofshare:

Mobile Plus DevOps – A love Story

Mobile applications could be considered a blessing and a curse for enterprise IT.

On one hand, the smaller, more discreet functionality implied by most (though not all) mobile apps offers to help IT continue to break from its past history of monolithic applications, scope creep, and so on.

That’s something mobile has in common with DevOps – the mosh pit of development/deployment/operations that pushes companies toward automation, continuous deployment of small updates, and generally a more holisitic view of how software applications work in a business setting.

So what’s the curse of mobile apps? It’s just a newer platform. So, as CIOs and other experts tell contributing writer George V. Hulme, the tools are still works-in-progress. The form factors and operating systems of users’ devices are widely varied. Security approaches are evolving.

But what technology revolution hasn’t presented some challenges? The payoff from both DevOps and mobile apps is too enticing to ignore. This FierceMobileIT ebook will help equip you to meet those challenges head on. n










Embrace Automation




DevOps and enterprise mobile: Two unstoppable trends converge

By George V. Hulme

The world may be going mobile, but many enterprises still haven’t taken their mobile usage beyond email and calendaring. However, enterprises are beginning to move to small screens in a big way – they’re just doing it a little more cautiously than consumers have.

Consider the “Citrix Mobility Report: A Look Ahead,” which found high levels of smartphone and tablet Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) action at enterprises. In fact, more than half of enterprises have some degree of BYOD in place – but enterprise line-of-business mobile apps accounted for only 6% of apps used in the enterprise. Now that’s starting to change quickly; according to this same report, the percentage of Windows-based desktop and laptop applications will drop from 64% of the enterprise apps used to 54% over the next year – with mobile as well as web and Software-as-a-Service apps taking up the difference.

So how do enterprises plan to catch up? More are now pushing hard to get those mission-critical line-of-business applications out the door. For a growing number of organizations the secret weapon is – or should be – applying a DevOps approach to mobile app development.

DevOps is a combination of Development and Operations. It’s about a tighter coupling of operations and development through collaboration, and improved communication and sharing of toolsets among IT teams. This theoretically enables application development and operations to develop, and deploy, more quickly and precisely to business demands.

It would seem that mobile development and DevOps are perfectly suited. Mobile computing is changing rapidly, with mobile apps being updated ever more constantly. And the highly collaborative and automated ways of DevOps can help enterprises to build and deploy the apps their mobile users need more quickly than with traditional or even Agile and Lean development approaches.

“Those enterprises that have been successfully breaking down their operational silos will be those that are most successful with mobile.”

KEVIN BEHR, CIO, HEDGESERV










Embrace Automation




The numbers coming in from industry surveys seem to support this. According to the Puppet Labs “2014 State of DevOps Report,” which surveyed 9,200 technical professionals, DevOps-driven organizations deploy software 30 times more frequently – yet with 50% fewer-failures than others.

“Those efficiencies are what have helped to drive modern DevOps,” says Kevin Behr, CIO at Hedgeserv, a tech platform and services provider to fund managers, and also president and founder at Praxis Flow, an IT management consultancy. And, Behr says, if anything is holding up the typical enterprise it is complexity.

“The systems enterprises build are too complicated, considering the expectations people have for rapid

delivery. Those enterprises that have been successfully breaking down their operational silos will be those that are most successful with mobile,” Behr says.

Can enterprise mobile teams reach the same level of efficiency in mobile development as has been witnessed with web and traditional enterprise teams that have made the move?

Yes, fortunately, but with some significant differences. The development and mobile testing tools aren’t quite as mature as enterprise toolsets, making it more difficult to build continuous deployment pipelines. Yet, mobile development efforts face many of the typical organizational barriers that DevOps has proven to break down, or remove entirely, elsewhere in the organization.

In fact, when done correctly, DevOps will go a long way in solving these mobile app development challenges. As you’ll see in the next chapter, the important thing is to simply get started.n

The development and mobile testing tools aren’t quite as mature as enterprise toolsets, making it more difficult to build continuous deployment pipelines.

>> DevOps and enterprise mobile: Two unstoppable trends converge







Sponsored Content

In today’s mobile application economy, providing the best user experience is critical to building customer loyalty. With over three million mobile apps available for download, we have one chance to provide a great user experience and deliver value to our mobile customers. How can we ensure a great mobile app experience that elevates our offering above the thousands of other choices our customers have?

Mobile DevOps solutions can help address these challenges, and provide business analysts, app developers, IT operations and support teams with the visibility and the insights needed to achieve user loyalty and maximize potential value to customers. When implemented effectively, a Mobile DevOps strategy can provide a comprehensive solution to create and deliver mobile apps, visualize and analyze user experience and app health, capture and investigate issues and inform app teams with real-world customer usage data to deliver the most impactful features and fixes in the next app update.

Achieving DevOps normally revolves around four key focus areas. Namely, Culture, Tools, Automation and Collaboration. An open culture amenable to DevOps principles is something

that an organization needs to foster from within. Effective adoption of tools and automation can be achieved through strategic partnerships with software vendors in the space. Finally, when cultural adoption is achieved, and tools and automation are implemented properly, good collaboration is the natural outcome of these efforts.

The results is developers can confidently create mobile apps that strengthen loyalty with every user interaction while supporting apps that run on multiple platforms, languages and methodologies. IT operations teams can obtain end-to-end visibility into issues across the mobile app infrastructure, from the app to the database. App teams can address and resolve issues quickly to consistently deliver a 5-Star experience to our mobile customers.

Mobile DevOps can help enterprises clearly understand the experience of mobile app users across the entire application lifecycle. It can help enterprises accelerate the delivery of UX-focused mobile applications and achieve faster time-to-market by accelerating continuous application delivery while ensuring robust security.

Mobile DevOps can aid in understanding the mobile app user experience across the entire application lifecycle. This stimulates collaboration between business analysts, developers, operations and support to accelerate mobile application delivery, improve mobile application support and maximize the value delivered via the mobile end-user experience.

Business analysts can work together with developers to strengthen user loyalty by collecting critical business, performance and health data across languages and platforms. IT operations teams can investigate where issues reside across the end-to-end mobile app infrastructure so that they can be fixed before your app receives a bad review. Real-user data can then be fed back to the app development teams to improve the next version of the app, greatly enhancing the user experience.

Mobile DevOps can provide great value to organization working to deliver mobile apps to their user-base, and the benefits of adopting a DevOps culture have been proven to be significant and long-lasting. n

Mobile DevOps: A Winning StrategyBy Jonathan Lindo, VP Enterprise Mobility, CA Technologies





Embrace Automation




Getting started: Many roads to mobile DevOps

By George V. Hulme

Where do you start DevOps with your mobile efforts? The simplest and most straightforward answer may be the best: Wherever you can most easily do it. There’s a common misconception that enterprise DevOps must be all or nothing. Not so, say the experts we’ve interviewed. Sometimes the best place to start is within one department, business process, or application.

“You don’t have to be DevOps-everywhere to get started,” says Brian Katz, director and head of mobility engineering at Sanofi.

“Realistically, you don’t ever need DevOps to be everywhere in the enterprise. Look first for areas where it makes sense to move away from Scrum or Agile areas that can make the move to DevOps. Some teams and

areas will be ready to automate and move more quickly. And if you are not doing so already, it’s better for you to move your DevOps efforts into your mobile teams.”

Katz adds that another way to begin mobile DevOps is to look for processes that are being done very well and are ready to be automated even more.

Start small, start smart David Mortman, chief security architect and distinguished engineer at Dell Enstratius, agrees. “By starting with small groups in large enterprises, or picking a single process where people can automate and collaborate more closely, you are on the road to building good mobile DevOps,” he says.

Others see starting with a single app as another viable way to build a mobile DevOps enterprise. Chris Cera, CEO at Philadelphia-based enterprise mobile and web product development consultancy Arcweb, advises enterprises to do just that: pick one mobile app and begin developing using DevOps. “I know there are large Fortune 100s that are trying to do this across thousands of people. That’s a hard, if not impossible, challenge. I think most organizations are better off picking a specific project and starting there,” Cera says.

“Look first for areas where it makes sense to move away from Scrum or Agile areas that can make the move to DevOps. Some teams and areas

will be ready to automate and move more quickly.”

BRIAN KATZ, HEAD OF MOBILITY ENGINEERING, SANOFI










Embrace Automation




It’s going to take an integration of mobile development tools with configuration management and automation toolsets—which are in use at many enterprises—to get the job done.“Most enterprises are using them at some level in their back-end systems. So it’s really part of building the same processes and just starting to become disciplined about them in mobile,” says Cera.

That discipline can start with a single phase of development, such as the build, or testing, of the apps in a DevOps way. “It just comes with making sure you have the right software development life cycle visibility to figure out where to start,” says Cera.

All of the development processes are typically connected to source code control, says Cera. “I think getting started really comes down to having the information about how

to best do it and then actually doing it in a disciplined way that makes sense for your organization,” he says.

It’s always important, but especially so in the beginning, that teams hold after-effort retrospectives and identify what worked well and what didn’t—then continually improve. “Take those lessons learned and then spread it throughout the organization,” Cera says. “You can build off your early wins.” n

It’s always important, but especially so in the beginning, that teams hold after-effort retrospectives and identify what worked well and what didn’t—then continually improve.

>> Getting started: Many roads to mobile DevOps






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Embrace Automation




Embrace Automation

By George V. Hulme

Among the greatest differences between DevOps enterprise mobile development efforts and traditional DevOps are the immaturity of the testing toolsets, the sheer number of devices and associated operating systems that must be tested against, and the fact that most apps are not deployed directly but through mobile app stores.

“Automating testing is crucial,” says Katz. “I think some people are under the false assumption that DevOps means the Wild West – that there’s no planning and no control whatsoever. But the fact is that DevOps means you can work faster and be more responsive, more agile and flexible, and yet still get the job done right.”

To move rapidly while “getting the job done right” requires automated testing to be in place for things like compatibility and security.

However, because of the fragmented nature of mobile devices and operating systems, getting mobile development testing to a mature and highly automated place may be quite difficult in many enterprises today. “Mobile is different because it is exponentially worse when it comes to device sprawl,” says Mortman.

For adequate mobile testing, even on a relatively simple platform such as Apple’s iPhone, six or more current iOS devices must be tested against several generations of operating systems still found in the wild. “When it comes to Android, it’s exponentially worse,” says Mortman. Compare that to Web app development, which may require testing three or four browsers on several different machine types.

Mobile devices also are more fickle than desktops and notebooks, which still have more processing power and RAM headroom. That’s why slight variances in CPU usage, OS optimization, and hardware configuration on smartphones and tablets can dramatically change the picture on very similar devices.

Getting mobile development testing to a mature and highly automated place may be quite difficult in many enterprises today. “Mobile is

different because it is exponentially worse when it comes to device sprawl.”

DAVID MORTMAN, CHIEF SECURITY ARCHITECT, DELL ENSTRATIUS










Embrace Automation




>> Embrace Automation

Keeping pace with the mobile market also requires the ability to deploy releases quickly. This allows for continuous updates and improvements as the market evolves. Continuous mobile integration, based on an ongoing and iterative testing cycle, should be built into the application management process. By implementing continuous integration throughout the phases of development, testing, and production, development teams will accelerate app releases.

The nature of mobile operating systems presents a big challenge when it comes to establishing mobile continuous integration pipelines that include custom enterprise mobile apps. Nonetheless, mobile apps must undergo the same level and types of tests as any other software application: usability, performance, compatibility, security testing, and low-level resource testing.

All of these tests are crucial on mobile devices because of the limited resources that mobile devices possess. Mobile DevOps teams want to automate as much of this work as possible.

However, because mobile apps often are delivered through app stores that do a final vetting on the app, it’s impossible to get the true continuous deployment pipeline often associated with DevOps-driven enterprises. “But you can continuously integrate and deliver up until the point you ship to the store,” says Mortman.

That’s exactly what enterprises are doing. They’re building continuous integration and deployment pipelines in their integrated development environments, such as Eclipse or Xcode, continuous integration tools such as Jenkins, and any number of the many testing platforms on the market. But “automated testing on mobile platforms is still extremely difficult,” warn Cera and others.

“You will see that successful DevOps teams, even in mobile, are very comfortable building the toolsets that they need,” says Behr. “They’re very resourceful that way and won’t wait for a viable commercial app all of the time,” he adds. “They just move.”

The major mobile device makers are aware of the issues. Apple, for instance, purchased testing company Burstly and its app testing service TestFlight earlier this year. TestFlight makes it easier for developers to create app testing programs. Developers can add new devices using only an email address. Prior to its iPhone 6 announcement a few weeks ago, Apple released the TestFlight app with iOS 8. “Prior to this, there really was no easy way to do testing on iOS devices,” says Cera. “Literally, if a developer wanted to test a new device the developer had to create a new build of the software. It was just crazy,” he says.

“That’s why you are always going to have a need to build custom testing and automation management tools in places doing Mobile DevOps. It’s just moving too quickly to wait for the big vendors to catch up,” says Behr. n










Embrace Automation




It’s surprising that DevOps isn’t already entrenched in enterprise mobile app development. One of the key benefits of DevOps is that it provides enterprises the ability to build applications more quickly and to react more swiftly to market demands.

But the move to DevOps won’t solve real business challenges until it allows enterprises to successfully deliver apps to users that meet business needs and are well suited for mobile. While DevOps strives to break down silos between networks, application developers, and operations teams, these efforts should also strive to break down the barrier between IT and business. “The enterprise has this obsession with functional organization structures. DevOps breaks them down, and breaking them down between IT business leaders is essential,” says Behr.

This is why DevOps can be so powerful for mobile teams. The mobile needs of the business are constantly changing, and mobile apps are also constantly changing, with new devices and enhanced capabilities coming to market. DevOps provides a way for operations and development teams to more closely align with those business needs.

The more effective mobile app development, testing, and operations that DevOps provides, the more time there is for effective business integration and to focus on designing apps that the business actually needs. “When done right, mobile DevOps is an opportunity to make sure your mobile apps works well. But it requires the IT teams to work more closely with the lines of business than they typically do now,” says Katz.

Consider the seemingly simple example of building apps for salespeople. They don’t have an hour, half hour, or even 10 minutes to grab a stat or to input new data. “They have about 30 seconds to enter data or to do something,” says Katz. “But too many development teams don’t look at the workflow of the apps they are building for mobile to consider how salespeople will use it. They don’t design apps that let workers get things done in the few seconds that they have.”


By George V. Hulme

“The enterprise has this obsession with functional organization structures. DevOps breaks them down, and breaking them down

between IT business leaders is essential.”

KEVIN BEHR, CIO, HEDGESERV










Embrace Automation




Katz advises development teams to reach out and work more closely with the business as they design and develop their apps. “Sit down and look at what the users actually do. Look at how they work, and provide to them an app that lets them conveniently get their job done faster and better,” he says.

The same is true for mobile apps that are designed to deliver real-time reporting. Typically, the applications are segmented the same way we segment the rest of the IT organization. “I found with mobile that successful groups span horizontally across many functional groups to get some sort of mobile content that’s really useful to the business in terms of real-time reporting and/or some sort of business statistics that actually can help them manage, get more leverage, and make better decisions,” says Behr.

“This way, everybody specializes in one or two parts of an application. So, when it comes time to build these reporting apps or these applications that we want to

deliver to mobile devices, they tend to be the summation of lots of little cylinders of excellence, working together in an organization. Which is, by definition, how DevOps really should function,” says Behr.

In order to stay competitive in the mobile app race today, enterprises need rapid development systems, up-to-date apps and the right teams organized in the right way. So it only makes sense that more and more businesses are embracing DevOps—which can help businesses achieve all of these—for mobile app development, and beyond. n

The mobile needs of the business are constantly changing, and mobile apps are also constantly changing, with new devices and enhanced capabilities coming to market. DevOps provides a way for operations and development teams to more closely align with those business needs.

>> Mobile Plus DevOps for Better Business-Aligned Design






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