Azure DevOps Consulting

May 31, 2024 Roberto Magalhães

Gain efficiency with Azure DevOps Consulting. Customized strategies, seamless integration and expert insights for your project success. Elevate your DevOps journey!

Simply put, in the words of the IT industry, Azure DevOps is “the next big thing” in technology. Microsoft's Azure DevOps is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product and offers a complete DevOps toolchain for building and deploying software. Microsoft launched this product to meet the demands of DevOps adoption in software development processes and the world of technology.

Formerly known as Visual Studio Team Services, Azure DevOps is a product that provides teams with reporting, requirements management, version control, project management, automated builds, and even test and release management capabilities.

The development of Azure DevOps is the culmination of more than 15 years of effort and learning in providing tools to support software packages and software development process teams. This extensive product often requires companies to pay for Azure DevOps consulting services.

Azure DevOps is a useful product for a variety of tasks and situations in the development pipeline, with many benefits, including:

Improved collaboration: Teams use Azure DevOps for centralized code hosting and management, as well as to maximize their efficiency. The Azure DevOps cloud format ensures that nearly all code remains stored in a single location, but allows collaboration across cloud resources to help improve coding efficiency. Popular teamwork platforms like Microsoft Teams are easily accessible within the Microsoft ecosystem and offer integrations with third-party data sources.
Continuous integration: Thanks to the reliable Azure DevOps platform and its emphasis on configuration management, developers continuously produce and deliver solutions. Whether a team deploys a solution to Azure or another external cloud platform, the Azure DevOps CI/CD pipeline manages the entire solution lifecycle, from development to delivery. Thanks to the above-mentioned integration options in Azure DevOps, workflows, delivery, and handover procedures are essentially simple, thus enabling continuous delivery.
Platform Neutral: Microsoft continues to be an industry leader in promoting teamwork, even among its competitors. As a result, Azure DevOps excels at integration, with a wide range of extensions and connectors for popular business and community tools like Slack and ServiceNow. The days of proprietary, closed-source solutions from a single vendor are over.
Security and Reliability: Because Microsoft hosts Azure in IRAP-certified data centers, users can rest assured that their information and systems will remain protected to the highest standards. Every minute of every day, Azure DevOps has someone helping customers and is working 99.95% of the time or offering money back to customers. The result is a platform where teams develop solutions with maximum confidence and security, without compromising the flexibility of incorporating open source alternatives.
Automatic updates: Azure DevOps consulting solutions take care of automatic updates and security patches, so users never have to worry about keeping their software up to date. Companies that adopt a CI/CD architecture also avoid downtime caused by updates. Substantial monetary and time savings allow teams to focus on improving other areas of product delivery.
Customization: Integration options in Azure DevOps allow customers to implement their own preferred methods and tools when developing and integrating solutions. This allows room for maneuver between groups and facilitates the development of personalized or exploratory delivery methods. Microsoft Azure DevOps implementation largely supports this customization.

Azure DevOps services and tools

Azure DevOps offers a variety of developer services to help teams organize their tasks, work together on coding projects, and then build and deliver applications. When creating software, developers, project managers, and contributors work together under the umbrella of Azure DevOps, which fosters a collaborative DevOps culture and set of procedures

This product allows companies to produce products and make improvements faster than they could with conventional infrastructure automation techniques. Teams can choose between working on-premises with Azure DevOps Server or in the cloud with Azure DevOps Services. Depending on a company's needs, they may also choose to utilize one or more of the following DevOps tools:

For source control, Azure Repos offers Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC) or Git repositories.
To support continuous application integration and delivery, Azure Pipelines offers build and release services.
Azure Boards helps teams plan and track their work using the Kanban and Scrum frameworks.
Azure Test Plans offers several methods, including manual/exploratory testing and continuous testing, for testing applications.
Teams have the ability to exchange packages from public and private sources, including Maven, npm, NuGet, and others, while integrating package sharing into their pipelines using Azure Artifacts.

The following collaboration tools are also available:

Customizable dashboards for teams with widgets used to share information, progress, and trends
Integrated Wikis for information exchange
Custom notifications
Extensions for integration with other well-known services such as Campfire, Slack, Trello, User Voice and others, as well as for creating exclusive extensions

Is Azure DevOps Consulting Right for Your Company?

DevOps is becoming increasingly essential as companies strive to become more productive, but sometimes teams don't know where to start with Azure DevOps. After all, this SaaS product differs from typical office procedures and requires additional considerations to ensure proper item management.

While implementing Azure DevOps definitely helps businesses, transitioning to the product is a bit of a daunting task for already busy development teams. Hiring Azure DevOps experts is a great way for companies to get their new system up and running in the most effective and efficient way, without removing existing team members from their normal responsibilities or a role for which they are not qualified.

Azure DevOps consulting helps companies assess their Azure resources and current IT roadmaps and maturity to help create the right adoption roadmap for Azure DevOps solutions. With their experience and product knowledge, they help ensure companies understand product capabilities while creating strategic implementation and automation plans. For companies with little or no experience with the DevOps approach, let alone Azure DevOps, working with a consultant is often the right way to get started.

Azure and the software development lifecycle

When it comes to software development, every phase of its lifecycle is vital, from planning and design to deployment and maintenance. Microsoft's Azure, through its Azure DevOps suite, offers comprehensive tools that address each phase of the software development lifecycle (SDLC). Let's dive deeper into how Azure enriches the SDLC:

Planning : Azure Boards, part of the Azure DevOps suite, supports agile planning. This includes backlog tracking, sprints, and user stories. It allows teams to prioritize work, visualize progress, and manage their backlogs with drag-and-drop capabilities.
Development : Azure offers an integrated development environment through Visual Studio and VS Code. Developers can use Azure Repos for version control, ensuring code remains consistent and enabling concurrent coding without overlaps.
Testing : Before deploying applications, it is vital to ensure that they work as expected. Azure Test Plans provide a comprehensive toolset for manual and exploratory testing. It supports multiple testing frameworks and enables automated testing, ensuring code is robust and production-ready.
Deployment : Azure Pipelines makes it easy to deploy applications smoothly. With its continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) capabilities, Azure ensures that code moves from the development phase to production smoothly, ensuring fast delivery.
Monitoring and Feedback : Once deployed, Azure Monitor and Application Insights provide tools for monitoring applications, helping you identify bottlenecks or potential issues. This continuous feedback mechanism ensures that any anomalies are resolved quickly, optimizing performance and uptime.
Maintainability : Azure DevOps not only supports the primary phases of the SDLC but also ensures that applications can be maintained in the long term. Cloud infrastructure provides elasticity to update or scale applications according to business needs. Azure's built-in automated update mechanism ensures that all tools and services are always up to date with the latest security patches and updates.
Integration with third-party tools : One of the main strengths of Azure DevOps in the SDLC is the ability to integrate with a multitude of third-party tools. This flexibility ensures that developers can incorporate tools they are familiar with or those best suited to the project's specific needs.
Cross-team collaboration : Azure DevOps fosters a culture of collaboration, bridging the gap between developers, testers, and operations. The suite offers tools that promote communication, ensuring teams are aligned and moving cohesively toward a common goal.

In conclusion, Azure capabilities span the entire software development lifecycle. Its seamless integration into the SDLC ensures teams can move from concept to code and deployment to monitoring efficiently, with speed, reliability and security. With Azure and Azure DevOps, Microsoft offers a holistic solution to modern software development challenges.

If you liked this, be sure to check out our other DevOps articles.