Open source software and DevOps: What are they, and how can your business benefit?

Small and medium enterprises are the lifeblood of Australia’s economy. But with digital technologies radically transforming customer expectations and the way business is conducted, SMEs are under increasing pressure to innovate.

Against this backdrop, open source software represents a golden opportunity, offering Australian SMEs a route to innovation and a surefire way to develop extraordinary software and services, inevitably leading to business growth.

What is open source software?

The world runs on software and especially open source. In fact, 99% of software projects contain an open source component. From hotel bookings to banking, so many new applications are built with code that anyone can inspect, modify and enhance. That’s because open source software is built and maintained publicly, meaning developers from all over the world can contribute to a single software project.

Put simply, open source is an enabler of innovation, increasing collaboration, enhancing security, optimising software reliability, and improving the quality of your digital services.

On a practical level, when your business imports an open source library, you’re not just adding code to your project, you’re actually inviting in a whole community of contributors and in return you get to benefit from the work that they do on their projects.

The value of open source

Many organisations now recognise that open source is essential, not optional, for modern software development success and the fastest way to accelerate digital transformation. For smaller businesses, the benefits of open source can be even more significant.

For one, open source software allows SMEs to scale securely at pace. While there are lingering misconceptions around open source security, mainly that risks are higher because code is openly available for anyone to use, it could not be further from the truth.

With open source, there are more eyes scrutinising code for vulnerabilities, which means issues are spotted early and can be addressed before they become problematic. Partnering with an organisation that provides tools and processes to allow businesses to code securely throughout the entire software development lifecycle is also key. Developers using these platforms can scan code as it’s created, scan their codebase (or portfolio of code projects on the platform) to identify issues and receive suggestions on how to fix vulnerabilities, preventing them from finding their way into new projects.

Additionally, for small businesses in Australia, innovation could be anything from developing a new mobile application for customers, incorporating a new e-commerce function or booking system, or simply streamlining online accounting processes.

Open source software development is a community effort, which means — rather than starting from scratch — developers can collaborate with the community to source code that is already there, build on it and accelerate the time to develop and deploy, saving valuable time that can be spent on solving critical challenges and driving innovation. This kind of headstart will lead to faster development and deployment of new software, which will help your business to compete with bigger players in the market.

How to ensure a successful long-term open source strategy

With such rich benefits on offer, you may be eager to get up and running with open source as soon as possible. But before you do so, both you and your developer team need to lay the right foundation. This starts with an effective culture that supports innovation from the ground up. After all, fostering a culture of collaboration, transparency and openness is crucial to ensuring transformation and innovation.

By following the developer’s lead, your SME can gain access to faster development lifecycles, well-tested software at scale, greater efficiency and code security.

This is where DevOps comes in.

What’s DevOps?

What do we mean when we say DevOps? A culture shift? A set of best practices? Specific tooling? What we call DevOps may differ from company to company, but one thing remains the same: DevOps is defined by people building software and how they work together, not by what’s in their toolkit.

You can’t buy innovation by simply giving your developers access to the latest tools.

DevOps, when done right, can offer huge benefits to your business. It increases software quality and stability and shortens lead times to production. For developers, DevOps focuses on both automation and culture. Essentially, DevOps is about how the work is done. It’s a combination of focus, means, and expected results.

While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to DevOps, these guiding principles — along with the right tools, processes and culture — will help SMEs achieve DevOps success.

The guiding principles of DevOps

1. Create a collaborative environment

   The starting point with DevOps is about ensuring software development and operations teams work together, side-by-side. It might sound simple, but it doesn’t happen without careful consideration and planning. Of course, technical expertise is mandatory, but there’s also a human element that underpins DevOps.

   Teams have to want to work together, know their responsibilities and understand the value every role brings. Only then can they create software that delivers real value to your business.

2. Close communication

   Your product and engineering teams need to understand each other, that’s crucial. Both teams are integral to the software development process and proper communication and trust are critical to ensuring collaboration. Effective collaboration relies on shared ownership — understanding and embracing that everyone is responsible and contributes to the work in some capacity. Each person involved, whether building the application, maintaining it, or contributing in another way, knows that they have a stake in the outcome.

   DevOps breaks down the old process of simply tossing work over the wall to the team on the other side and hoping for the best.

3. The power of automation

   Automation enables consistency, reliability, and efficiency, making it easier to troubleshoot problems and bugs. Leveraging automation will help you to avoid the trap of institutional knowledge, where only certain people know how to do certain things.

4. Embed security into your DevOps process from the beginning

   Thinking about security at the end of the development cycle is a surefire way to stall the pace of innovation. Security issues will be discovered at the later stages of development, causing inevitable delays. Baking security into DevOps makes it a shared team responsibility and something all can contribute to. Essentially, “DevSecOps” empowers everyone to identify vulnerabilities and rectify them as they happen, meaning issues are nipped in the bud early. This enhances the efficiency of product development and improves the security of the final output.

   In the context of open source, not only are there more developers involved in identifying and fixing security issues, but they are eager to advertise their contributions and are incentivised to find and fix flaws before going live.

5. Keep things moving

   Don’t expect to hit a home run with your DevOps strategy the first time round. It’s an iterative process and you should be prepared to review and adapt to what the data tells you. For example, automating repetitive tasks like reporting and testing gives instantaneous feedback so your teams can rapidly understand the impact of their changes throughout the software lifecycle. That means they can finetune how to work together more efficiently, make decisions together, and implement changes based on shared data. That’s what best practice looks like.

The bottom line is that today, every company is a software company. Investing in open source software and your DevOps strategy will redefine the way your business develops software and, as a result, will enable you to accelerate innovation, outpace competitors, and cut down costs — all while minimising security risks.

This all needs to be underpinned by a culture of collaboration, transparency and openness. At the same time, working on open source is a gift to the community. With every commit, comment, and pull request, you’re creating opportunities for yourself and for others. That’s the beauty of open source.