Infographic: Why You Need a DevOps Toolchain

Before I went back to my roots and started writing again, I did front-end web development for about 14 years. Requests were always flooding in, and I had to be ready to act when things broke (which was often back then).

To keep up, I maintained a collection of common code snippets that I could use. When I had a fix at the ready, it was a pretty routine situation.

But I was never trained in code, so when I was stumped I had to experiment by investigating causes, consulting colleagues, perusing message boards, experimenting, and of course Googling. These were non-standard situations.

This was important because often I was connecting in-page HTML with stylesheets, analytics, CRM or marketing automation, databases, and other odds and ends. Connecting a web page to analytics, marketing automation, CRM, back-end IT systems, and hardware was the toolchain that pulled the business forward.

Seeing toolchains everywhere
Back then, I had no concept of toolchains. But once you discover them, you see them everywhere.

Read the Standard+Case white paper

Done well, toolchains allow your IT department to increase velocity, align tools and activities for DevOps environments, impact staffing, automate communication and telemetry, and orchestrate communication with data, systems and processes.

As processes and major incidents move forward, the communication tool of choice can change depending on who is involved. But it goes beyond just using the right tool. What’s really important is delivering the right information at the right time to the right people, in proper context. In today’s IT environment, you have to be versatile to connect all the different tools together to move a complex workflow forward.

Standard situations and case management
Some processes are very familiar, and you can make them modular by plugging in steps here and there. Others are more ad hoc, and are used to handle unfamiliar situations. Rob England calls these standard situations and case management situations, and you can read about Standard+Case in his whitepaper.

Delivering the right information starts with connecting the right information sources to the communication tools and platforms you’re using. Otherwise you’re collecting all that data for nothing.

Toochains forward and backward
But this is only the forward part of the toolchain story: moving processes forward.

Moogsoft has announced something it calls Probable Root Cause. Based on the data available and the logs of steps made during an incident, what sparked the incident? Sometimes the data that can answer that question can be hidden in third-party systems or inaccessible logs, and the telemetry required to uncover the secrets can be daunting.

So toolchains can propel your processes forward, and they can retrace the steps to find the probable cause. I could have used that back in the day!

Learn More About DevOps Tool Chains

Read Gartner’s research note on DevOps toolchains

With our leading integration platform and unlimited options for both automated and manual controls, xMatters is the only solution that can enable the DevOps tool chain. We’re not the only ones promoting the idea of creating a tool chain that you can use as you move processes forward. In a new research note, Avoid Failure by Developing a Toolchain That Enables DevOps, Gartner discusses the merits of a DevOps tool chain as well. Read it with our complements!

For more on how xMatters can hep with DevOps processes and operations, check out our new datasheet on DevOps solutions.

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