DevOps and Continuous Delivery are all the rage and for good reasons. But their meaning is already being diluted and, surprisingly, not just by the marketing machines.

In our work we often encounter a belief that IT Operations professionals are not needed anymore: you just learn the tools, maybe a few practices and you are good to go.

We think this is going to come back to haunt us.

We believe what companies and SMEs in particular need is a whole “business service delivery” with both manual and automated processes, contracts and SLAs for the entire software application lifecycle, not just software and not just maintenance of the status quo.

Read our post It take two to DevOps to know more about where we stand and why we started HighOps in the first place.

Our Managed Application Services are not to be confused with traditional IT Operations outsourcing. Traditional outsourcing is usually done solely as a tactical cost cutting measure (and often delivered by junior, cheaper personnel).

Our managed services prove that the exact opposite is in fact not only possible but even desirable: fewer, more senior experts, leveraging modern technology and processes can provide high quality services at the same cost (and often less at scale).

An IT operations partner like HighOps strives to enable development to deliver more often into production, rather than making its best effort to prevent change. We nurture collaborative relationships with the intent to pull development towards Continuous Delivery, providing reliable, predictable platforms that not only welcome but invite customers to move faster.

The underlying, fundamental change is the realisation that systems being outsourced will need to evolve no matter what, and to build that into to the contracts from the beginning instead of the standard tactical risk adverse approach.