What DevOps Means for Channel Partnerships

Constant collaboration and communication are key parts of a DevOps-centric strategy at most organization. For this reason, DevOps means that communication with your partners has become more important than ever — particularly if you coordinate with them on software delivery or management.

Openness, which is important in order to maintain the flexibility to switch easily between different technologies and frameworks, is another key part of DevOps. This means that clinging to proprietary technologies or standards makes your company less attractive to potential partners who have embraced DevOps. Closed standards are a danger to DevOps.

Continuous, real-time action is paramount to DevOps — which seeks to avoid the delays and missed opportunities that happen when plans are made far in advance of delivery and goals change by the time a project is finally complete. From a channel perspective, this means it's important to be able to coordinate constantly with your partners. It's no longer enough to meet once a year to discuss common plans; you need to be collaborating continuously.

DevOps redefines questions of scale. If you do DevOps well, you create a single set of tools and processes that work at any scale — whether you're dealing with a very small or a very large project, or one in between. By extension, your channel strategy should allow you to treat all partners the same, regardless of their size. This is more efficient and lays the foundation for better channel relationships.