What is DevOps?
DevOps is a set of practices that brings together software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to shorten the development lifecycle and deliver high-quality software continuously. It emphasizes collaboration, automation, and monitoring at all stages of software development, from integration and testing to delivery and infrastructure management.
Traditionally, development and operations teams worked in silos, leading to slow deployments and frequent bugs in production. DevOps breaks down these silos by fostering shared responsibilities and using tools that automate repetitive tasks like code integration, testing, and deployment. This leads to faster release cycles, improved system stability, and better alignment with business goals.
Key components of DevOps include Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Delivery (CD), Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and monitoring and logging. These practices help teams detect issues early, respond to changes quickly, and ensure that systems remain reliable and scalable.
This is part of a series of articles about Kubernetes CI/CD
Key DevOps statistics
DevOps adoption
DevOps adoption continues to grow as organizations seek faster software delivery and improved collaboration. These stats show the scale and impact of DevOps adoption globally.
- 80% of organizations currently practice DevOps (Puppet)
- 77% use DevOps for software deployment or plan to do so soon (Harvard Business Review)
- 74% of organizations have adopted DevOps in some form (RedGate)
- 50% of DevOps adopters are classified as elite or high performers (Nagarro)
- 15% of companies are planning to adopt DevOps, while 9% are yet to begin (Pulse)
- 94% of organizations say platform engineering helps them realize DevOps benefits (Puppet)
- 78% of professionals had to learn a new skill after DevOps adoption (Atlassian)
- 69% of organizations have DevOps-named teams or titles (Baytech Consulting)
- 46% of organizations are relatively new to DevOps (<3 years), while 54% have 3+ years of experience (Atlassian)
DevOps market growth
The DevOps market is expanding rapidly, driven by demand for faster software delivery, automation, and cloud-native architectures.
- Global DevOps market will grow from $10.4 billion in 2023 to $25.5 billion in 2028 at a CAGR of 19.7% (Research and Markets)
- Market value reached $4.3 billion in 2020 and is expected to hit $12.2 billion by 2026 (Research and Markets)
- North America held 38.5% of the global DevOps market in 2023 (Custom Market Insights)
- DevOps is widely used in healthcare, with 73% adoption (Helpnet Security)
DevOps challenges
Despite strong growth, DevOps teams face persistent challenges, especially around skills, culture, and legacy systems.
- 33% of organizations cite a skills shortage as the top challenge (Puppet)
- 29% report legacy architecture as a barrier (Puppet)
- 21% struggle with organizational resistance to change (Puppet)
- 31% of IT leaders identify people-related issues as their biggest concern (Gartner)
DevOps technologies
Tooling is critical in DevOps, and various platforms dominate specific areas of the DevOps toolchain.
- Docker is used by 64% of developers for containerization (JetBrains)
- AWS holds a 31% share of the cloud computing market (Flexera)
- Git dominates version control with 89.07% market share (JetBrains)
- RabbitMQ (49%) and Kafka (46%) are top messaging tools (JetBrains)
DevOps engineering and skills
DevOps engineers are in high demand. These stats show trends in hiring, diversity, and pay.
- DevOps positions are 13.8% women, 86.2% men (Zippia)
- Average age of a DevOps engineer is 39 (Zippia)
- 75% of DevOps teams are 12 people or fewer (DORA)
- 68% of IT teams have upskilling programs (up from 30% in 2020) (DevOps Institute)
- 37% of IT leaders report DevOps/DevSecOps as their biggest skills gap (DevOps Institute)
DevOps CI/CD
Continuous Integration and Delivery are foundational to DevOps workflows and critical to achieving fast, reliable software delivery.
- CI tools market valued at $1.33 billion in 2025, projected to reach $2.27 billion by 2030 (Research and Markets)
- CI/CD and version control lead to 2.5x faster delivery (DORA)
- 53% of teams use Continuous Integration; 38% use Continuous Delivery (Mabl)
- Jenkins leads the CI/CD tool market with 46.35% share (Devzery)
- 1.4x better reliability seen in teams using CI/CD practices (DORA)
DevSecOps
Security is being integrated into DevOps through DevSecOps, enabling safer software from the start.
- DevSecOps market was valued at $3.73 billion in 2021, projected to reach $41.66 billion by 2030 at a CAGR of 30.76% (RSK Cyber Security)
- 36% of teams develop software with DevSecOps (up from 27% in 2020) (Practical DevSecOps)
- 72% of organizations are integrating observability and security (Dynatrace)
- Top threats include ransomware (46%), DDoS (41%), and access misconfigurations (39%) (Logz)
- 39% use web app firewalls; 22% use firewalls/IPS; 19% use SIEM (Logz)
DevOps monitoring and observability
Observability is critical for troubleshooting and maintaining system health. However, complexity remains a barrier.
- 54% of DevOps teams are responsible for observability (Logz)
- 85% use more than one tool for monitoring, adding complexity (Logz)
- Only 14% of teams are satisfied with their MTTR (Logz)
- 36% focus on observability to manage cloud costs (Logz)
- Top tools: Grafana, Prometheus, AWS CloudWatch, Datadog, New Relic (Logz)
- 73% take several hours to resolve production issues (Logz)
DevOps and cloud
Cloud adoption is tightly coupled with DevOps, improving scalability and flexibility.
- 85% of organizations will adopt a cloud strategy by 2025 (Gartner)
- 63% of DevOps teams use a hybrid cloud model (DORA)
- 76% of DevOps teams use public cloud (some multi-cloud) (DORA)
- Cloud users are 14% more likely to meet performance goals (DORA)
- 30% of teams meet all 5 essential cloud characteristics (DORA)
- 39% of North American/European companies use industry cloud platforms (Gartner)
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