Is the disruption of DevOps the new “Gig” in Singapore?
In the age of a highly diversified workforce and evolving technological landscape, the gig economy has no doubt integrated itself across various emerging economies including DevOps.
DevOps have now not only become indispensable, but revolutionary within the software development space. Globally, its value is predicted to be worth a massive share of USD12.85 billion by 2025 according to reports by Grand View Research.
It’s looking promising for developers in the space, and even more so within the gig economy. Let us share with you why:
Is DevOps a game-changer?
According to a Forrester report, DevOps is gaining great momentum in markets such as Japan, China, India, South Korea, and Singapore. It brings the advantages of:
- Agility and scalability
- Improved customer experience across operational channels
- Socially enabling the banking experience with more customer touchpoints i.e customer friendly mobile apps
- Ability to apply learned insights from actionable data
With DevOps, businesses can prioritise sophisticated software over manual documentation, enhance its delivery of services, more face-to-face collaboration between teams, and a focus on technical excellence and automation.
It also allows financial services providers to take greater advantage of cloud platforms for data intelligence and analytics, using cloud storage services, and building test platforms for emerging technologies in the Industry 4.0.
What are the emerging technologies in Industry 4.0?
Defined in South China’s Morning Post article, the fourth industrial revolution or “Industry 4.0”, is a digital makeover that requires workers to master new skills ranging from using complex technology platforms to different ways of working and interacting with colleagues, in order for them to remain employable. This is necessary to support emerging technologies that are taking precedence in Singapore and across Asia.
- Cloud API development
Cloud software and API have been terms that we are already familiar with in the development market. How is this then an emerging trend with the banks in Singapore?
DBS, one of Asia’s renowned digital banks, is aiming to be a ‘cloud-native’ bank with the help of DevOps. The bank has built an API platform on Pivotal Cloud Foundry, which enabled it to upgrade or update the system without any downtime. Plans are also underway to migrate DBS' mobile wallet, PayLah, to the Pivotal development platform. Through this, DBS hopes to be more pre-emptive in meeting its customers' needs as the Singaporean bank focuses its attention on building a data platform and beefing up its capabilities in data analytics and artificial intelligence.
- Serverless computing technology
Serverless technology is growing in popularity and is often lauded as a “hands free” solution with benefits like unlimited scale, less operational staff -- and of course, lower cost.
It is a cloud-computing system that allows for simplified code deployment. It runs snippets of the back-end code for a single function. And the cloud provider runs the server while it dynamically manages and allocates machine resources.
Ultimately, severless technology promotes the reduction of operational cost with no virtual infrastructures to manage. This also increase the efficiency of employees who can focus more on applying their skills in highly technical tasks.
Serverless computing is available through cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and IBM Cloud Functions. All of these cloud providers ensure the efficiency and reliability of the serverless computing execution model.
HSBC’s USD10 billion investment in DevOps
HSBC, one of the largest banks in Asia Pacific (APAC) highlighted key strategies to adopt a more agile approach in their operations:
- Introducing an agile discipline framework for automation and data science
- Re-configuring office practices and environments
- Simplifying key processes
- Developing governance and metrics
With that, HSBC is investing USD10 million in CloudBees, a US software delivery management system provider. HSBC currently uses CloudBees Core platform technologies to accelerate its overall software delivery system. The investment further enhances the importance of DevOps in the bank’s business and technology future. Following this, over 3,000 IT staff have now moved across to HSBC’s Digital Services, with 24/7 responsibility for more than 300 online banking and mobile services in more than 40 countries.
DevOps – a sector that requires on-demand talent
Automation of data science tasks and generating insights from data sets have been largely executed by people. This becomes an issue when the talent pipeline for software engineers, data architects and developers are dwindling in numbers.
Like the nature of DevOps, only the precise needed resources of a function or task are used or performed to complete a project on site. As such, businesses require the deployment of developers on an on-demand basis.
The general newness of DevOps makes it difficult to find viable full-time employees who may be a perfect candidate to come in and establish a culture that promotes improved software release cycles, software quality, security, and rapid feedback on product development.
Identified security; data and decision science; and cloud specialists and developers were identified as “trending” skills that candidates should be looking to acquire in order to make the cut.
We can help
Any disruptive practice or change in an industry can create fear or uncertainty, and DevOps is no exception. If your company is still looking to source for the right fit of talent within DevOps, or if you’d like to find out what are the hiring trends for DevOps within contracts, please follow us on our Linkedin. If you are actively looking to further pursue your career in the DevOps space, do leave us your contact details through the form below and we will be in touch!
