There seems to be a substantial amount of tension rising high among the IT professionals of various organizations or IT-based industries concerning DevOps vs ITIL.
People use ITIL as well as DevOps systems consistently to deliver quality-oriented work to the customers, but there is a bit of confusion in this stead. Which one is better than the other or better yet do these both systems compensate each other or are at odds with each other?
ITIL first came into being during the 1980s and it stands for information technology infrastructure library. It uses or takes into account various sets of differential processes such as change management, service level management, and incident management as well. ITIL is considered to be an efficient and cost-effective way that organizations take to avoid extra costs and other relative expenditures over time.
But in essence of doing that they lose the sight of the bigger picture, which is creating a delusion that the IT infrastructure of their company by the help of ITIL is running smoothly where in fact, the difference is clearly night and day.
ITIL Vs DevOps
ITIL has multiple rabbit holes within its mode of working as it can take many man-hours to solve or execute the problems, halt the communication within various sections and distract the organization from achieving their goals. It can become extremely difficult for the people or professionals working with ITIL to deviate from these practices and start doing business using the DevOps systems or environment.
However, there are organizations or businesses there that use both the ITIL and DevOps systems together, in a particular environment, these two different systems also co-exist. That would come at you as a surprise but this, in fact, is true. The services of the ITIL cannot be neglected in favor of the fact that it has standardized or provided the IT systems with a start point. This is considered as a huge favor to the complete IT ecosystem, but for a large part of the community, the favors given by the ITIL are not perfect. Consider this if you run a company or organization and are constantly being traumatized by customers to release updates for your IT systems or apps, then what should you do? You choose something extremely fast, efficient and at the same time very cost-effective.
This is where ITIL comes into the play; organizations do fall for this trap as they choose the less costing thing or software over the other alternative. ITIL is used for the purpose of product development and the product here without any doubt is the software systems or the applications being developed by the organizations. When these updates have been developed or manufactured, the next thing would be to implement the process of automation or in simpler terms the process of DevOps systems which can ensure efficient deployment of the server systems. Multiple organizations work smart in their own way and use both ITIL and DevOps systems at the same time.
These use the ITIL systems to develop the software or tools for deployment and then use the DevOps systems for the efficient deployment of the systems prepared. This way, they are saving a ton of money using ITIL systems and at the same time losing a lot through practicing both ITIL and DevOps systems at the same time. This is not the smart work, but the hard work and extremely distressing work disguised as the smart work and you know what the most enjoyable thing about this whole crusade is? It's the falling of the professionals or the IT-based organizations for this façade.
But for the most part of the play, it is necessary to value the additions or the submissions of the ITIL based systems and recognize the contribution of the ITIL technology in service of the IT-based systems. DevOps, on the other hand, is used purely as a refinement tool which is basically there to minimize, eradicate or circumvent the mistakes or errors left behind by using other systems such as ITIL. It is one of the many reasons due to which the organizations which use both systems at the same time often shift back from the brink of running out of the business and fulfilling the demands of the customers and on a better note.
The delivery of the deployments or other updates that are specifically engineered for the customers should be agile and quick, otherwise what is the point of all this? If your end customer is not going to enjoy the updates or security patches that you have developed on time, then you might as well shouldn't bother at all or join some other line of work other than the IT systems.
What is the endgame here?
From going through this whole article, you might have grabbed a few points such as ITIL Foundation certification training is a must-have for the organizations that are willing to work on the co-existence of these two distinctive systems. Without the necessary knowledge or skills to control or work with these systems, all of this might end in turmoil. Professionals should be mindful of the use of the DevOps systems along with the ITIL based technology.
Coming back to the original question, are these systems friends or enemies? Well, this statement demands a relative answer which is not logical enough to be delivered. Therefore, neither these systems are friends, nor these are enemies but novices taking part head to head in combat against the troublesome working process for deployment or implementation of various IT-based systems. ITIL and DevOps can coexist with each other under a common roof or within the premises of an organization or IT-based company, but the problem arises when the understanding for both is clouded.
It is clouded in the sense that the professionals don't have the right knowledge or the tools to work distinctively with these systems or the skills required to bring about the desired results for the fulfillment of the common end goals.