What Is the Next Level of DevOps?

DevOps – What Comes Next

DevOps didn’t have one clear-cut “next level” – it’s more like the discipline is suddenly branching out in a whole bunch of different directions all at once: platform engineering, DevSecOps, GitOps, AIOps & Site Reliability Engineering (SRE). Each one takes the core DevOps principles and uses them to tackle a specific problem – like, for example, making it easier for developers to get their work done, or making security a more integral part of the development process.

Key Points

• Platform engineering is about building your own self-service platforms that help take the hassle out of development for your team – and by extension, scale DevOps across your organisation.\
• DevSecOps is about weaving security into every stage of the delivery pipeline – as opposed to just treating it like some final gatekeeper.
• GitOps does what it says on the tin – its all about using Git as the single source of truth for your infrastructure, so that you can have automated infrastructure reconciliation and get a clear audit trail.
• AIOps takes all the big data jargon (machine learning, event correlation etc) and applies it to IT operations, in a bid to make your systems less prone to sudden failures.
• SRE is all about making sure your services are as reliable as you need them to be – through things like service level objectives, incident management and observability.
• And these all sort of coexist and overlap – platform engineering is probably going to be the next step for a lot of teams who are currently part of the DevOps scene

What does the “Next Level of DevOps” look like?

Well, bluntly, the answer is that there isn’t really one. DevOps isn’t being “replaced” by a new “next big thing” – it’s just sort of evolving into different specialisms. That said, a well-known (and somewhat referenced) DevOps maturity model does describe 5 levels: manual (1), basic automation (2), standardised DevOps (3), platform engineering (4) & AI driven DevOps (5).

Its worth noting that most teams still sit at level 2 or 3 – they’ve got CI/CD pipelines in place, they’re doing some amount of automation, but they still struggle to get their developers actually shipping things. For those teams, the natural next step is probably going to be platform engineering – building an internal platform that abstracts all of the infrastructure complexity and gives them a smooth self-service experience.

For those teams that are already on level 3, the next step is probably going to depend on whether their main pain point is making sense of all the operational data they’re generating, or making their systems properly reliable. For that first group, AI driven DevOps might be the way forward. For the second, SRE is probably the better bet.

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A question of evolution – what comes after traditional DevOps?

So, we had traditional DevOps which was all about breaking down those pesky silos between development and ops, and getting CI/CD pipelines up and running, and infrastructure as code written.

But – and here’s the thing: we also created some new problems.

Developers now have to navigate a nightmare of different tools & configurations & permissions. Some poor sod of a developer might have to spend weeks just to get their first line of code deployed. Meanwhile, the DevOps promise of “build it and ship it” started to look more and more like “you’ll spend most of your time fiddling with Kubernetes and Terraform”

The next generation of DevOps is going to be all about addressing this friction. Platform engineering is about treating your internal developer platform as a product (ie a thing that is actually designed with the needs of the developers in mind). DevSecOps helps plug the security gap that opened up when everyone got so fixated on speed. GitOps addresses the reliability gap by declaring what you want to happen and then just making sure it does happen. And AIOps is about using machine learning to tame the beast that is operational data.

5 Trends That Are Going to Shape The Future of DevOps

Platform Engineering

Platform engineering people see as the next evolution beyond DevOps – it’s a total game-changer. Essentially, you build internal developer platforms (IDPs) that let developers take care of their own infrastructure, reuse workflows they’ve already got, and follow a standard path for common tasks.

Its mindset is way different though. In DevOps, you’re all about responding to tickets and keeping the systems up and running. In platform engineering, you’re designing the experience for those developers. Your customers are your internal devs, and you’re building a product that they’ll love.

We got a State of Platform Engineering Report that said 93% of companies that are really doing well in this space have a dedicated platform team – but 62% of those teams think they’re having a tough time finding people with the right skills. That talent gap is what makes this one of the in-demand DevOps career moves right now.

You can probably figure out the key elements of platform engineering just by reading the title – things like a dev portal (which is often built using something like Backstage or Red Hat Developer Hub), self-service infrastructure, and golden paths that standardize the way developers do common tasks without cramping their style.

DevSecOps

DevSecOps isn’t just about piling on more security checks at the end – it’s about integrating security into every step of the software development process, from planning right on through to deployment and monitoring.

The old DevOps approach was all about speed. Security was sort of an afterthought – if it got checked at all. DevSecOps flips that on its head. It moves security controls to the very start of the process – as early as possible in development.

To make it work, you need to automate security testing and compliance checks, so they’re happening all through the CI/CD pipeline. In other words, every dev is a security dev now – not just a dedicated team of security people.

GitOps

GitOps is all about using Git as your one-stop shop for all your declarative infrastructure and app definitions. Automated reconciliation then keeps your running environments aligned with the configurations in source control.

Adobe’s done this with their Flex CI/CD platform. The results were impressive: the team reduced manual intervention, eliminated configuration drift, and improved visibility. They also made deployments faster, more predictable, and more reliable.

Essentially, GitOps is about ditching all those fragile, ad-hoc deployment workflows and getting a real-time look at what’s going on, so you can roll back in case something goes wrong.

AIOps and AI in DevOps

AIOps is what you get when you combine big data and machine learning to make IT ops processes actually work for you – including event correlation, anomaly detection, and figuring out the cause of a problem.

Monitoring data’s getting to be way too much for humans to deal with – it’s happening too fast. AIOps platforms work in conjunction with the management and service management tools you already use, and they use AI and analytics to speed up and automate your responses.

So, AI’s a big help with log analysis, anomaly detection, and all those repetitive op tasks – but don’t get it twisted, it’s not going to replace the judgment and creativity of a human engineer. At least, not yet.

SRE and Reliability Engineering

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) is all about taking software engineering best practices and applying them to your ops work. It’s all about service level objectives (SLOs), incident management, and making sure your services are running reliably.

SRE and DevOps are two peas in a pod. DevOps is all about delivery speed and team collaboration. SRE is all about reliability and measurable service levels. So, a lot of people end up combining both practices in the end.

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DEVOPS VS PLATFORM ENGINEERING VS DEVSECOPS VS AIOPS

These approaches coexist. A platform engineering team might use GitOps for deployment, DevSecOps for security, and AIOps for monitoring. They are layers of maturity, not competing philosophies.

Whch Skills Should You be Learning Next as a DevOps Engineer?

What skills you should be learning next depends on which direction you want to go in.

Cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) remain some of the most essential foundations to have. Really get to know one providers services, networking and identity management on a deep level.

Kubernetes and container orchestration is right at the heart of platform engineering and something like GitOps. You should understand operators, custom resources and cluster management – its getting increasingly valuable.

Terraform and infrastructure as code are still pretty core – though some people will tell you Terraform is having trouble keeping up with the complexities of modern infrastructure. Learning Kubernetes-native alternatives like Crossplane or operators is a pretty forward-thinking step.

CI/CD and GitOps tools (Argo CD, Flux, Jenkins) are just standard fare for the job.

Security automation and DevSecOps skills include policy-as-code (Kyverno, OPA), vulnerability scanning and compliance automation – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Observability and reliability engineering covers a whole load of areas, including distributed tracing, metrics, logging, and SLO management.

Python or Bash scripting is still pretty much the baseline for any kind of automation.

AI-assisted operations is another area that’s starting to emerge. Being able to use AI for log analysis and incident response is a skill that’s going to be really useful in the future.

How Do You Advance Your DevOps Career

The path from being a generalist DevOps to specializing in something is pretty predictable.

Step 1: Get your fundamentals in order. Think Linux, networking, Git, one cloud platform, Docker and basic scripting. Build some projects that show you can actually deploy an app.

Step 2: Pick your specialization. If you like product thinking and developer experience then platform engineering is probably for you. If you like security then DevSecOps is a good bet. And if you like reliability and systems thinking then SRE is probably where you need to be. AIOps is the one for people who are interested in data and machine learning.

Step 3: Get really deep in your chosen area. So for platform engineering that might mean learning about Backstage, Kubernetes operators and self-service workflows. For DevSecOps its policy-as-code and security automation. For SRE its observability tools and incident management.

Step 4: Build a portfolio. Its hands-on projects that show you can actually do things that matter more than certifications. Deploy a platform, build a GitOps pipeline, implement security scanning or set up observability for some demo app – and document everything you did and the outcome.

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Conclusion

There is no single “next level” of DevOps – its branching out into different specialized practices each addressing a different limitation of the original DevOps. Platform engineering solves the problem of developer friction. DevSecOps solves the security gap. GitOps solves deployment reliability. AIOps solves operational complexity. SRE solves reliability engineering.

For most teams, platform engineering is probably going to be the most natural next step. Its builds on your existing DevOps foundations and directly improves developer productivity. For individuals, the right path is going to depend on what problem you want to solve.

The common thread that runs through all these different paths is a shift from managing systems to building systems that can manage themselves. That is the real evolution of DevOps.