NoOps, short for “no operations,” is the concept of doing away with dedicated IT operations teams. The development team automates all facets of IT infrastructure management. 

Conventional automation replaces mundane, repetitive tasks. NoOps entails advanced automation that takes over higher-level tasks as well. Automated software handles complex tasks such as application deployment and infrastructure management. Human intervention reduces and is only at a bare-minimum level. 

NoOps is a logical progression of the DevOps approach that aims at faster, cheaper, better quality IT operations. 

The key elements of NoOps

The key elements of NoOps include:

• Automated provisioning. IT automation solutions connect to cloud providers such as Azure or AWS and manage the cloud environment in real time. For instance, the automated solution manages the infrastructure based on live computing requirements. The system does not have to wait for the operations team to spin new servers.
• Real-time monitoring and auto-remediation. Network monitoring tools connect endpoints and centralise monitoring across environments. These tools also emit real-time alerts. Auto-remediation tools trigger processes when network parameters breach the set thresholds. For example, a delay to an SLA-critical workflow triggers the provisioning of extra resources. If a process cannot find a file, it pauses, issues notifications to the connected users, and restarts later when the file becomes available.
• Change Management. Automated software identifies differences between environments to deploy updates across different domains. 
• Revision Rollbacks: Automated revision rollbacks to the last known stable version in case of failure.

Why invest in NoOps

NoOps offers several advantages.

Enterprises find a solution to the crippling talent shortage. With IT teams stretched thin and digital initiatives rising, most enterprise IT teams cannot keep pace with demand. Over half of the business partners report frustration with the time it takes IT to deliver digital services. Automating IT infrastructure frees up scarce and expensive human assets for higher-level programming. As the system manages the infrastructure, developers may focus their energies on writing code. A recent Salesforce Mulesoft survey estimates IT teams spend 68% of their time on day-to-day “keeping the lights on” tasks.

The accuracy and reliability of IT services improve. Automated infrastructure management and monitoring cut human errors and inefficiencies in infrastructure management. 

Enterprises get the benefits of several efficiency improvements. The automated infrastructure, complemented with CI/CD tools, allows deploying applications faster. The infrastructure scales up or down depending on the demand.

NoOps is cost intensive, but the investment pays back for itself soon. The elimination of dedicated IT operations teams saves labour costs. IT operational budgets are reduced.

The pitfalls:

The benefits notwithstanding, there is a big question mark on the practicality of NoOps.

NoOps environments have extensive reliance on technology, which comes with its pitfalls. 

NoOps automation offers limited visibility. Developers cannot understand what happens under the scene. If something goes wrong, a fix becomes difficult. More so since the approach eliminates human IT Operations teams from the mix.

Lesser human investments reduce payroll bills and enable consistent and productive output. But such advantages come with a lack of customisation options. A dedicated IT operations team that understands user requirements makes customising easier.

NoOps enable the automated application of security protocols. But the infrastructure runs on auto-point. Maintaining control over the infrastructure becomes more challenging.

An unintended consequence of NoOps-enabled automation is a lack of knowledge transfer. With little to no human involvement in the operations process, the enterprise does not know how the infrastructure works. They lose the capability to troubleshoot and fix problems when things do not go as per plan. They remain at the mercy of the algorithms. If the algorithms do not work as decided, switching to manual mode might become difficult due to a lack of expertise.

Is NoOps viable?

Even when an enterprise embraces NoOps, switching over takes work. Adopting NoOps requires a significant overhaul of the IT tools and cultural change.

NoOps is not a single platform that anyone can buy. It differs from outsourcing IT operations or moving IT infrastructure to the cloud. It is instead an approach that combines many tools and technologies. 

Implementing NoOps involves a shift in approach. The onus is on the IT leadership to 

• Instil a mindset of automation and quality among the IT team and the broader enterprise workforce.
• Promote change in the development approach. NoOps requires developers to hardcode automation and alerting early in the development cycle. Developers have to co-opt auto-remediation workflows into the application and cut technical debt. The presence of technical debt would need troubleshooting by the operations team.
• Promoting change in the development approach. NoOps require shifting monitoring to the development teams to enable testing in production. Quality checks take place during development rather than during the production stages.
• Drive digital transformation. NoOps requires reworking IT processes and workflows to implement automation. Often, machine learning and artificial intelligence also enter the mix.
• Promote tools and technologies such as containers (Kubernetes), microservices and serverless computing. An automated environment needs seamless orchestration of these tools. It also needs managing dependencies between disparate processes without manual handoffs.
• Install continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) to deploy and scale applications.
• Secure top management buy-in. NoOps will not succeed without management buy-in at the onset. Automation and bringing about changes in the development approach are cost intensive. The project will fail without adequate budgetary support and a commitment from the C-suite to see it through until the end. 

Advances in cloud provider services, microservices and serverless technologies enable large-scale automation. These technologies offer a viable route to NoOps.

But many experts consider NoOps an aspiration rather than a workable endpoint. IT eliminating manual operations for lifecycle management is not a realistic expectation. The idea is to automate as much as possible.

Netflix is one of the NoOps pioneers. The company builds tooling to remove operations tasks and eliminate processes as much as possible. For instance, they have no run-books and develop code instead. An alert processing gateway issues alerts and routes them to the developer or development team who wrote the code that issued the alert. 

Moving to a NoOps model is difficult, and an ultimate NoOps environment may never be workable. But the journey towards a NoOps lodestone offers rich rewards. Enterprises proactive in removing automation roadblocks grow faster and get a competitive advantage.