The past two decades have shown us tremendous leaps in technology and innovation. While the future looks bright, we know the road ahead for developers and operations is challenging. IT operations experience difficulty navigating a labyrinth of environments, hybrid clouds, devices and disparate applications. On a dreary note, the global risk landscape has widened its horizons, with new threats appearing daily. In response to these trends, DevOps processes have incorporated security strategies, transitioning into DevSecOps.
DevOps is a software development methodology that combines development and operations to deliver software changes faster and safer. DevOps is not just a technological movement, it is also a cultural alignment. To succeed in DevOps, teams need to cross-collaborate, adopt best practices that resonate across disparate teams and have a unified mindset for achieving success. Organizations that display high levels of DevOps maturity also display faster time to market, smoother process execution and efficient management of their infrastructure. On the other hand, integrating security into the development process right from the start allows organizations to build more secure software. In 2025, DevOps processes will adopt more security checks in all stages of development, making DevSecOps the flavor of the season.
With all eyes on 2025, DevSecOps evangelists advise transformative changes to redefine how you build, deploy and manage your software.
In this blog, we list five transformations happening in the DevSecOps space that you need to know.
With around 80% of vulnerabilities attributed to manual misconfigurations, DevOps professionals understand the importance of automating tasks in daily processes. Even a medium-sized enterprise boasts numerous devices and virtual machines, sometimes deployed remotely. Configuring them manually is tedious. Multiple tools and workflows add complexity, making it difficult for DevOps professionals to administer and manage these devices. In 2025, engineering and operations teams will increasingly use solutions like Progress Chef to manage and monitor configurations automatically.
Automated orchestration will allow organizations to streamline and optimize complex workflows across the enterprise software infrastructure. Orchestration gives organizations granular control over their IT fleet and allows them to target specific devices at specific times. Organizations implementing automated orchestration with solutions like Progress Chef Courier can efficiently perform routine tasks and respond to critical incidents. From gaining flexibility overall dimensions (what, when and where) while performing a change rollout to making upgrades and maintenance easier, orchestration solutions help make a DevOps professional’s day less exhausting.
At the end of 2024, the SaaS market stands at a whopping $317B USD and is projected to grow another 18.4% by 2032. The numbers underscore the value that SaaS brings to its consumers. With almost every tool in the market transitioning to SaaS mode, can DevOps tools ignore the trend? . In 2025, we predict many popular DevOps tools will transition to a SaaS model. Not only does this make it more accessible, it also significantly lowers operational costs. Accessibility also brings with it the benefit of democratization, where stakeholders have a better grasp of the state of the IT fleet. SaaS deployments of DevOps solutions enable practitioners to jump-start DevOps processes without worrying about the intricacies of infrastructure setup, ultimately leading to faster time-to-value.
The advent of AI-driven automation has been sudden and intense. It has permeated all aspects of IT, including DevOps. AI is increasingly being used to elevate customer experience and boost efficiency. In 2025, we expect DevOps professionals to leverage AI to automate processes and accelerate time to market. AI can help generate code in an infrastructure as a code setup and automate DevOps workflows. We also see potential where AI can generate analytical data to help customers analyze and derive insights faster.
The world has witnessed a record number of cyberattacks. During the third quarter of 2024 alone, 422 million data records were breached worldwide. One report claimed an average of 1876 cyber-attacks per organization in Q3 of 2024. While the numbers are alarming, the response of the impacted organizations was also closely watched. Organizations with prompt threat responses displayed strategy and confidence. Incident response is a major contributing factor that measures organizational attitude towards security. DevOps maturity is also assessed regarding how well these organizations assess and remediate the issue in time. For this, organizations need to be fortified with DevOps tools that provide out-of-the-box scans, help them identify impacted servers, automate fixes across the devices and provide a consolidated view of the effect of the change. DevOps solutions should stitch in features that help organizations respond to incidents immediately with orchestrated workflows. As a result, teams will have greater control over the timeline of events.
Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) teams face immense pressure to manage complex infrastructures. They must maintain consistent policy enforcement, risk mitigation and compliance across distributed teams. Effective GRC requires translating regulatory language into clear, actionable policies adaptable to ongoing changes. In 2025, we predict that DevOps practitioners will adopt tools that help define, monitor and consistently maintain compliance policies, converting high-level governance into human-readable guidelines. These tools should provide visibility into the IT fleet, enabling real-time compliance checks and policy enforcement to help align with corporate governance and regulatory requirements.
DevOps practitioners aim to minimize manual efforts by integrating automation into their strategy through automated policy monitoring, compliance checks and reinforcement. This approach verifies consistent adherence to regulatory and internal standards, reduces operational overhead, enhances regulatory responsiveness and maintains compliance across all environments.
The DevOps space is witnessing significant evolution. While many trends are in their nascent stage they are positioned to greatly impact the way DevOps teams operate. Innovation is not limited to the above trends; there is more to come and more to achieve. If you’re interested in understanding how Chef can help you align with these innovations, please reach out to us to learn how we can help you stay on top of your infrastructure and compliance needs in 2025.
On that note, let's bid farewell to 2024 and hope that 2025 will yield the first-quarter results we have been waiting for. Season Greetings and Happy New Year, everyone!