Database DevOps: Channel partners land implementation projects

Project help

IT solution providers can help guide companies into DevOps projects that are particularly difficult to implement and involve high levels of collaboration and visibility across a company's IT enterprise, explained Ben Geller, vice president of marketing at Datical Inc., an Austin, Texas-based database release automation vendor.

Editor's note: Datical rebranded in 2020, and is now called Liquibase (a commercial version of the open source software).

Ben Geller

"When you talk about solving the data challenges of DevOps, you have to realize this does not just end with one group," he said. "We are not just working with the data team we are working with developers, testers and line-of-business owners."

Geller added that systems integrators are well-suited to deliver the kind of change DevOps requires at large enterprises. He said vendors like Datical also leverage partnerships with systems integrators that bring in process reengineering across a customer's IT enterprise, as well as development talent.

One Datical partner that is looking to help customers with DevOps projects is Capgemini SE.

Rishi Singh

In his evaluation of the nature of the work, Rishi Singh, director at Capgemini, said DevOps projects are impeded when they confront legacy applications built on mainframe or AS/400 systems that use age-old methods of development, archaic tools and monolithic code with no way to deploy them as stand-alone systems.

"Teams working on distributed applications are able to address the continuous delivery on the code side, but when it comes to the database, they seem to struggle," Singh said. "Database automation is more often than not excluded or considered as an afterthought when standing up the DevOps pipeline."

The significant problem with database DevOps development is the lack of end-to-end visibility across the pipeline -- which impacts everything from  the way requirements are evaluated, the way code is written, the way tests are performed and the way code is moved around, Singh said. He added that database administrators need to pay attention to these issues to envision a single click deployment.

Database automation is more often than not excluded or considered as an afterthought when standing up the DevOps pipeline.

Describing what he is seeing at customer sites, Singh said many companies with large IT enterprises that embark on database DevOps engagements are challenged when developing digital applications that connect with back-end systems of record in order for the app to execute some form of functionality.

"This has been the basis for two-speed IT," Singh said. "However, things are changing and companies can visualize a steady velocity across the value stream."

Rishi also noted that when one database change impacts four or five applications, each of which is essential to the software cycle, database administrators need to figure out what the impact will be and how they'll coordinate among line-of-business managers to mitigate the impact of the change.

"Most large or midsize companies with large enterprises have departments that are pretty much siloed," Singh said. "If you have multiple applications across different lines of business using a shared code base and each of those applications has its own release cycle, then you can expect at least a week or more for the release to occur."

Vendor benefits

Database DevOps projects not only present big opportunities for partners, said Derek Hutson, Datical's CEO, but vendors like Datical also benefit. Partnering lets vendors avoid the cost of building a service component within their businesses. Working with partners also enables vendors to broaden their marketing and sales efforts. To those ends, Datical recently launched the Datical Partner Program.

"Datical is not trying to build a large services organization," Hutson said. "We want to build a partner program that includes systems integrators like Capgemini, Accenture and other partners who can implement Datical's software and integrate it with an entire ecosystem of DevOps or automation solutions that deliver value to the customer's long-term objective of increased software development velocity," Hutson said.

Derek Hutson

As companies resell Datical software or implement it in their DevOps projects at customer sites, Hutson said he expects systems integrators to help the company grow its customer footprint and increase the number of projects that add Datical's software to database DevOps projects.

When asked why a partner program was strategic to Datical, Hutson said that as enterprise customers drive digital transformation initiatives the effort to increase the velocity and automation of software development is key.

"We believe IT solution providers must partner together to deliver full automation across the software development lifecycle to maximize value for our collective customers. This is why a robust partner program is so vital," Hutson added.

Redgate Software's Lloyd, meanwhile, said the company's partner program is evolving amid demands for collaboration, communication and process change on DevOps projects.

"Whilst supporting our reseller partners on the transactional side of the business is very important to Redgate, the growth area and focus for us is now to ensure we are aligned with partners who can, via their subject matter expertise, help us support our customers who want to realize their DevOps transformation," Lloyd said.

Lloyd added that introducing database DevOps involves a change in processes, as well as tooling, and partners have a lot of work to do to help their customers effectively implement DevOps projects.

"Even though Redgate's tools integrate with and plug into the same infrastructure used for application development, users still need to be shown how to, for example, version control their database code, as well as their application code," Lloyd said.