The software development industry is highly competitive, where every player makes their best efforts to release software before anyone else. With that desire in mind, DevOps is therefore the practice followed by legions of organizations for a common goal: to deliver high-quality software quickly. DevOps is all about collaboration between different teams on different methods using unique tools to optimize the software development lifecycle. When it comes to DevOps implementation, organizations have two options; get an in-house team or consult professional DevOps service providers. Being a herculean practice, not every organization can implement its own internal DevOps culture, especially in startups. So, the best option in the present scenario is to work with external DevOps Consulting Services.

Not just startups, but also well-established organizations are now migrating towards DevOps Consulting as it is proven to be cheaper than recruiting and managing an in-house team. Nations including the United States, Germany, Turkey, Canada, UK, Brazil, India, and many others have established themselves as the leaders in providing DevOps Professional services. The DevOps market industry is valued at over USD $6.73 billion and is expected to reach around USD $26.3 billion by 2028, with a compound annual growth rate of over 20% between 2022-and 2028. Considering those numbers, if any organization lags in implementing DevOps, it will lose the software development race in the long run.

Cost of DevOps Consulting Services in Different Regions

Calculating the overall cost of DevOps Consulting is the foremost consideration when picking a provider. The cost of DevOps as a service will vary depending on the geographical location of the provider.

Region	Cost per hour
USA	$100-150
UK	$80-120
Australia	$100-150
Asia	$50-100
India	$25-75

These were the average cost per hour in different countries established as the leading DevOps service providers. The information above shows that the USA and Australia are relatively expensive compared to India or other countries in Asia. However, a country providing service at a cheaper or costly rate does not signify its relative quality. A region’s overall cost is influenced by factors like economy, per capita income, and demand for service. India in particular is one of the most affordable regions for DevOps Consulting, as demonstrated by the legions of organizations who regularly connect with companies in India for this specific service. Not just because of the pricing, but for its high quality of service, too. 

Advantages of DevOps Consulting Services

1. Access to DevOps Experts: Getting reliable DevOps engineers may seem tricky when an organization’s business model is not at all about best-practice software architectures. A reputed DevOps Consulting provider will be equipped with experienced and reliable DevOps professionals, ensuring their clients get the best service. Organizations having a business model other than cloud software architecture can attain the best DevOps service through external consulting without worrying about having an in-house team for the same purpose.
2. Flexibility to Get a Suitable Professional: DevOps Consulting companies provide an individual or a team of DevOps professionals to an organization. Sometimes, that professional’s working approach may not align with the organization. In that case, that organization has the option of letting the consulting company know about any concerns, who will in turn assign a new professional better suited to their goals.
3. Better Service at a Lower Cost: Hiring an in-house DevOps team involves wages, tools, training, and infrastructure expenses. Even after investing, there is no guarantee that the team can provide the results you were hoping for. In contrast, when you consult DevOps professionals, you are not only guaranteed that you will get the best DevOps service for your organization but at a lower overall Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) as well. You are safe from spending on training, tools, and infrastructure required for implementing DevOps in your organization.
4. High Deployment Speed: DevOps is all about optimizing the software development life cycle through Continuous Improvement and Continuous Development (CI/CD). Every DevOps Consulting team is bound by a contract by which they have to accomplish specific goals and/or the deployment of an App or system. Furthermore, the consulting company will handle the entire project management responsibility, ensuring that high deployment “velocity” is maintained.

Cons of DevOps Consulting Services

1. Possible Communication Gaps: Due to cheaper costs, many organizations from the U.S.A., UK, and Australia prefer DevOps consulting from Asia and India. However, there can sometimes be communication gaps between the client organization and a DevOps vendor, which require specific communication and collaboration processes to be established. Even after that, there can still be some instances where issues can arise due to communication and/or cultural gaps.
2. Too Much Reliability on Vendors: When you use DevOps consulting, you come to depend on the vendor to handle your organization’s DevOps practices. However, there can be instances where a vendor can be responsible for shutting down a client’s business. Even though you will be notified before that happens, it becomes an additional expenditure. On the other hand, if the DevOps consulting service provider is not reliable or is inexperienced, your application security could potentially be compromised. To avoid such issues, it is best to pick a reliable service provider with years of proven experience.

DevOps-as-a-Service (DaaS)

DevOps-as-a-Service (DaaS) is about shifting the entire DevOps tools and infrastructure to the cloud. When it comes to DevOps Consulting, then DaaS can be used by companies so that they can access their client’s current tools and practices, initiate cloud migration and handle the entire delivery pipeline to the cloud. Furthermore, to sustain CI/CD and continuous testing, which are the pillars of DevOps, DaaS provides the development tools in a single cloud-hosted kit. All these actions combined make DevOps-as-a-Service reliable for improving the process’s performance, scalability, and automation.

DevOps Consulting Services vs. an In-House Team

• Management: Managing a crucial team like DevOps is a challenging task. If the entire DevOps team is in-house, then typically managing them directly is not a major task – although it is a task that must be done and comes with an associated supervisory cost. However, seamless ease of management of a remote DevOps team is not the case with professional services/consulting. Remote teams can either be in the same city or in other parts of the world. Nevertheless, while technology has brought everyone closer, managing a DevOps team remotely is still a unique, albeit manageable, challenge as compared to an in-house team.
• Delivery Speed: No matter how fast the team has started working on a software idea, rapid working will not matter if there are delivery delays. One of the best things about DevOps Consulting is faster delivery. Every consulting company strictly endeavors to meet deadlines, and takes every measure possible to ensure fast product delivery. Conversely, the biggest issue with in-house teams is absent staff. Whenever a professional is absent, finding a replacement is typically not possible. However, professional vendors ensure that you always have ample professionals available and provide you with a substitute in case of any staff absenteeism.
• Talent Pool: When a company hires an in-house DevOps team, they can choose from a vast range of professionals and shortlist them as per their skills. Once they have shortlisted the candidates, they are bound with them for the long term. There is nothing wrong with long-term employees, but it will hinder your access to outside talent. Professional DevOps services do not come with such complications as you can request to replace any existing team member with a new one if you are unsatisfied. In other words, you will access a broad range of talent when you use DevOps Professionals.

DevOps Consulting Services Best Practices

Understanding the best practices of DevOps professional consulting before opting for it helps get the right results per your organizational goals. With that in mind, here are some of the best practices for DevOps professional services.

• Determine the form of Required Professional Services: There are legions of DevOps professional vendors offering all kinds of DevOps-related services. Before looking for a vendor, it is best to first determine what form of professional you are looking for. Whether you need someone to augment your existing DevOps team or if you want an end-to-end DevOps solution, your goal will help you filter the organizations that will help you.
• Find a Reliable Professional Services Vendor: Picking a professional vendor will directly impact your product quality and software delivery. Always choose a DevOps professional company that aligns with your goals and has a proven track record of providing similar services. You can reference their previous projects and clients and learn about their total experience, their level of scalability, and feedback from their previous clients, among other factors.
• Maintain Communication: As stated before, a communication gap is one of the biggest challenges in DevOps Consulting. Being a significant yet complicated task, many organizations ignore maintaining steady communication with the consulting company, due to which the project quality is compromised. The best practice is always to maintain communication to avoid such a scenario. Ask different questions and answer the vendor’s questions as well to ensure that both parties remain on the same page.
• Never Underestimate Project Management Tools: Using project management tools is among the most underrated yet essential practices. When an in-house team and an external consulting team are working on the same project simultaneously, or a third party is working on a project, having a common project management tool will easily solve all the management issues. Several free and paid project management tools are present in the market, which you can choose per your organization’s and project requirements.

ThinkSys DevOps Consulting Services

A reliable DevOps professional vendor can take your DevOps approach to the next level. ThinkSys is among the leading DevOps companies in the world, offering software development, and many other QA-related services. ThinkSys has been working with organizations worldwide to provide the best-in-class DevOps services without any hindrance or interruptions. The perfect blend of software development services and DevOps ensures the right continuous delivery and integration in your organization. Here are the different DevOps Consulting services that you can get at ThinkSys:

Our Professional DevOps Consulting Services:

Our DevOps Strategy

At ThinkSys, we follow a streamlined approach toward DevOps, keeping quality standards in mind. Below is the detailed strategy we use while providing our DevOps services.

1. Assessment: Before moving further, the team at ThinkSys will learn and come to intimately understand the existing DevOps culture of your organization. Details like existing agile methods, process of workflow automation, microservice architecture, and way of delivering software components will be understood by our team to identify the necessary work required.
2. Create a Plan: Once the team understands your existing DevOps culture and infrastructure, they will create a future course of action roadmap. This roadmap will be a blueprint of the actions and goals that will be achieved in the future to reduce issues, cost, and development time while increasing the frequency of new software version releases.
3. Execute the Plan: With all the planning successfully completed, the team moves on to execute the plan in the most effective ways. Our team begins to implement Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD), and version control to boost stability with the environment.
4. Optimize the Plan: Our team will continue identifying the best practices while implementing the plan to enhance performance and scale the application. This optimization of the plan will help in the long run and will also automate the verification to add updates to the plan.
5. Continuous Support: ThinkSys believes in providing continuous support to every client. Even after the completion of the process, our team continues to provide support for solving any issues and queries with the projects. The dedicated support team and different DevOps teams maintain stable communication to solve any issue you may be facing.

At ThinkSys, we are always eager to onboard any new client for DevOps consulting or to solve any DevOps issue. Our teams are proficient and skilled in following the best DevOps practices, ensuring fast delivery and smooth CI/CD pipelines.

FAQ(DevOps Consulting)