While DevOps promises increased efficiency and convenience, it is also seen introducing new challenges and risks. If your company is part of the rising wave adopting a collaborative approach to streamline software delivery, then this article is for you.

Today, we’ll introduce you to the most significant obstacles DevOps teams have encountered this year and will continue to struggle with for at least a few more months, according to Dreamix’s survey Among Experienced DevOps Experts. In addition to these, you’ll read strategies for overcoming these obstacles and tips for maintaining a high-productivity work environment.

Moving away from legacy systems

In the era of escalating digital transformation demands, numerous companies find themselves still reliant on outdated legacy systems. These aging technologies often present significant hurdles when it comes to maintenance, updates, and their inherent limitations compared to more contemporary alternatives. Even if your existing infrastructure has faithfully served your needs for years, it might now be constraining your progress.

At the heart of a successful DevOps implementation lies an efficient CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Development) pipeline. This automated sequence of steps streamlines the software development process by continuously building, testing, and deploying code changes with every commit. A robust CI/CD pipeline ensures swift integration and testing of code alterations, consequently accelerating the overall software development lifecycle.

However, these benefits remain out of reach for older systems that struggle to align with modern tools and processes. For instance, legacy systems might lack the requisite APIs or integration hooks to seamlessly function with contemporary CI/CD tools.

One viable solution worth considering is IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), a cloud-computing model that furnishes virtualized computing resources. This approach offers a cost-effective means to modernize your infrastructure, liberating you from the constraints of outdated models and propelling your operations into the realm of 2023.

Notably, IaaS harmonizes well with microservices, especially within the DevOps framework. The capacity to independently develop, deploy, and manage microservices leads to expedited development cycles and enhanced scalability. Coupled with the streamlined resource management facilitated by cloud-based infrastructure, this creates a potent DevOps platform capable of promptly adapting to evolving market conditions and customer demands.

Automating complex release processes

As technology evolves, software development, deployment, and maintenance become increasingly intricate. With the continual addition of features and dependencies, DevOps teams face the challenge of accelerating software releases while upholding stability and scalability.

The adoption of specialized software to automate repetitive tasks in the development lifecycle simplifies complexity and enhances release reliability. Automating the development-operation relationship to the fullest extent possible optimizes the production process, reduces redundancy, and fosters improved team collaboration, thereby mitigating the risk of errors.

In the realm of DevOps automation tools, Docker and Kubernetes stand out as popular choices. Docker serves as a containerization platform for building and distributing software containers across various environments, while Kubernetes excels at automating their management on a large scale. Together, they form a potent duo that expedites software delivery.

DevSecOps – the future of DevOps

The evolving landscape of DevOps prioritizes shorter development cycles, and deferring security to a later stage can result in significant delays. According to a 2021 study conducted by Security Compass, 73% of respondents reported that manual security procedures were causing slowdowns in code releases.

Consequently, the concept of DevSecOps (Development, Security, and Operations) has gained traction. This approach is becoming increasingly popular in conjunction with DevOps, as organizations acknowledge the critical importance of integrating security throughout every phase of the development process. By incorporating security considerations throughout the entire development cycle, issues can be identified and rectified at an early stage, ultimately optimizing software delivery.

To implement DevSecOps practices effectively, it’s crucial to involve a security team early in the development process, ensuring their ongoing participation at each stage. Automating security tests within your CI/CD pipeline, triggered at the appropriate development phases, is essential. Additionally, continuous monitoring and evaluation of these tests are vital to ensure that your systems remain as secure as possible.

Maintaining high availability and scalability

As you embrace DevOps, the need for maintaining scalability takes on heightened significance. The proliferation of services and dependencies, coupled with the inevitable surges in demand, can complicate the timely detection of issues.

Addressing these challenges involves the implementation of monitoring and logging tools to closely track your systems and services. When seamlessly integrated into your CI/CD pipeline, these tools offer early alerts to potential issues, enabling proactive resolution. If your system grapples with meeting high demand, solutions like auto-scaling and load balancing, such as Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling, can improve system responsiveness.

Additionally, it’s imperative to employ load testing to assess your system’s performance under real-world conditions. Tools like Apache JMeter and Gatling can replicate high-traffic scenarios, gauging response times and resource utilization. This method is highly recommended for identifying and rectifying bottlenecks before they disrupt your operations.

It will put transparency, accountability and reliability at the forefront of open source AI products to counter Microsoft, OpenAI and Google. Many of the most important software products we use every day, such as Android, WordPress, PHP, Nginx and Apache, are open source.
Mozilla has pledged $30 million to develop an alternative to the closed systems developed by big tech companies that put profits first.

Mozilla’s approach, like everything else they create, will be human-first.

Mozilla is committed to helping create an Internet that hews to the following principles:
-The internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible
Individuals’ security and privacy on the internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional.
-Individuals must have the ability to shape the internet and their own experiences on it.
-Free and open source software promotes the development of the internet as a public resource.
-Transparent community-based processes promote participation, accountability and trust.
-Magnifying the public benefit aspects of the internet is an important goal, worthy of time, attention and commitment.”

The company said it aims to create a decentralized artificial intelligence community to serve as a “counterbalance” to large profit-driven companies. Mozilla is focused on the benefits of AI for humanity, not on turning humans into a commodity.

The announcement states that their first two projects will focus on creating free, reliable, and open source generative AI, which is a product like ChatGPT and Bard. Their second focus is on creating a privacy-oriented recommendation system that “does not misinform or undermine our well-being.”

If it achieves this goal, Mozilla will have made an important contribution to changing what the future of AI will look like.

The AEA 2021 will bring together 30 selected startups from across Asia providing solutions in the areas of healthcare, work & lifestyle reform, and sustainability, all of which have become key issues globally. During the event, the startups will deliver business presentations showcasing their services and products, with the winners being selected on the basis of a wide range of criteria. These will include innovativeness, the social and economic impact of their products and services, their commercial viability, the potential for collaboration with Japanese companies, and the opportunity for business expansion in Japan. The entire event will be held online.

Over 200 tech startups from 14 countries & regions across Asia have showcased their solutions at AEA since 2012

Since its launch in 2012, AEA has provided a stage for promising entrepreneurs and startups from rapidly growing countries and regions in Asia on which they can showcase business ideas and technologies aimed at addressing social issues. To date, a total of 217 tech startups from 14 countries and regions across Asia have participated in AEA events. All entrants were nominated by key notable institutions such as the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) and the University of Tokyo, as well as by incubators, accelerators, universities and other institutions supporting start-up companies in their respective countries and regions.

AEA2021 to offer 1.5 months of mentoring sessions and access to an online community to accelerate startups’ entry to the Japan market

The AEA2021 event will feature several new initiatives that will further accelerate collaboration between Japanese companies and participating startups. This year, to boost the chances of the startups entering the Japanese market, they will receive mentoring for 1.5 months aimed at brushing up their business plans for the Japan market. This is expected to help entrants acquire a better understanding of the market and facilitate their collaboration with prospective Japanese partners.

Last year’s AEA2020, the first AEA to be held fully online, resulted in a total of 51 matching opportunities and 31 meetings between startup entrants and participating Japanese companies. Aiming to promote even greater collaboration this year, AEA2021 will provide additional business-matching sessions providing opportunities for deeper discussions; communities and gatherings that will allow startups to expand their networks will also be hosted. Startups participating in previous AEA events took advantage of these opportunities to accelerate their business development, with some of them successfully achieving IPO or entering into M&A discussions.

AEA2021 will also enhance the online networking and community-building opportunities it offers to participants using the chat tool “Slack”, enabling a new online community consisting of more than 200 startups that have participated in previous AEA events as well as Japanese companies, sponsors, and overseas nominators. This will provide opportunities for ongoing business collaboration between Japanese companies and startups after the event, including the opportunity for direct communication, the chance to build relationships with overseas nominators, and to disseminate information about Japanese companies’ own efforts in support of startups.

Founder of Grameen Bank and Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Muhammad Yunus to share his vision of social businesses

To commemorate the 10th anniversary of AEA, this year’s event will feature a special keynote speech by Dr. Muhammad Yunus, who will share his vision of social businesses – businesses established to address specific social or environmental problems—and next-generation leadership. Dr. Yunus is a Bangladeshi social entrepreneur who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 in recognition of his founding of the Grameen Bank, which pioneered the concepts of microcredits and microfinance with the aim of alleviating poverty and promoting peace. Dr. Yunus was also awarded the Olympic Laurel for his work at Yunus Sports Hub, the global social business network creating solutions in and through sport.

Kashiwa-no-ha Smart City to host the event and serve as a launchpad for the startups’ entry to the Japan market

The Kashiwa-no-ha area is promoting an urban development model based on the three themes of “environmental coexistence,” “health and longevity”, and “creation of new industries.” In 2019, Kashiwa-no-ha launched an initiative aimed at accelerating the creation of new industries whereby the entire city serves as a platform for companies and organizations to conduct trials and demonstrations. In the past, start-ups that participated in AEA events have used Kashiwa-no-ha as the launching pad for their entry to the Japan market, running demonstrations of their solutions there with some of them subsequently securing commercial production of these. Japanese companies in turn use Kashi-no-ha as a demonstration facility when seeking collaboration with startups.

His brilliance caught the attention of admissions offices at colleges. He said that his dream school was Georgia Tech where he’d hope to major in aerospace engineering. Anderson was accepted to Georgia Tech in Spring 2021.

His dream came true. Last Monday, he was among the thousands of students welcomed to Georgia Tech’s campus for the first day of fall classes. While most 13 year olds are starting middle school, Anderson started his first day as a sophomore with an integral calculus class.

Anderson described his first day there as “pretty interesting”. He called the campus “massive”. Despite the size, he said he felt like home at the campus. He shared that as the day of classes went on, his nerves subsided, and he was excited to be starting this journey. He added:

“This is the kind of school I have been wanting to go to for a very long time, and I am finally here.”

His parents, Kobi and Claire Anderson, were right by his side for his first day. The Andersons beamed with pride about the experience but also expressed that it was unnerving. “Have we prepared him enough?” his mother questioned. “Have we taught him enough about failure?” But his father’s answered: “He’s willing to be stretched. He knows how to get back from a punch … and continues to strive.”

Anderson is the youngest student on Georgia Tech’s campus, and he doesn’t take that for granted. As a young African American boy, he understands the magnitude of being a positive and inspirational influence in his community.

He also says that some people believe that things come easily to him, but that is not the case. His mom said:

“I am really proud of him, but I am really grateful to Georgia Tech for opening a door of opportunity to a student like Caleb.”

While on campus, Anderson is hoping to join clubs like the Ramblin’ Rocket Club. Earning a master’s degree from Georgia Tech, pursuing a career at SpaceX and starting his own company are some of his long-term goals.  His top goal is to pay it forward, saying, “I want to help others that may just need nurturing and resources.”

You can find out more here. 

The extremely contested 9-rounds long battle led to a point draw at the top between 4 chess players – Ivan Cheparinov, Vasil Spasov, Momchil Nikolov and the coach of our national team, Petar Arnaudov. Eventually, first place was awarded to Ivan Cheparinov. Fifth place in the ranking was taken by the 13-year-old Nikola Kanov.

The Accedia Masters tournament was organized for the 1st year by Accedia, with the support of the Bulgarian Chess Federation 1928. It aims to improve avid chess fans in the field of IT by giving them the opportunity to play and learn from the best professionals in the world. 

The idea for the tournament came from Georgi Peltekov, Engineering Director at Accedia, who has been a keen chess fan years. He found a strong connection between chess and technologies, so he decided to combine the two in Accedia Masters. The event creates conditions both for popularization of the ancient game among professionals and for growth of our young talents.

George Peltekov is an Engineering Director at Accedia – a Bulgarian company for IT services.He has 15 years of experience in the field of information technology, having held various technical and leadership positions with a focus on software development and consulting. He has led projects for large companies such as IBM, Siemens, VW and USA Today. He joined Accedia when the company was founded as a Senior Software Consultant, after which he took on the role of Project Manager. He is currently responsible for the overall implementation of over 15 projects and manages more than 50 software engineers and consultants.

He loves spending time with his family and developing his chess skills.

Tell us more about Accedia Masters. How did you come up with the idea to create such a tournament?

The idea for the tournament has been burning in me for a long time, because chess has been my passion for a while. The catalyst was a tournament in March, which I took part in and in which I saw the interest it arouses among extremely different participants – from young to old. We play chess regularly with colleagues and friends from the IT field and we have organized internal tournaments in Accedia more than once. The connection between logic in IT and chess is popular and that is why I decided to combine all this in one place – to gather the best chess players in Bulgaria, together with representatives from the IT sector. I believe that this event will challenge our skills while we can have fun in the meantime.

When and how will the event take place?

The event will take place in the Accedia’s office, within one day. 9 rounds will be played according to the so-called Swiss system, and the control of the game will be 10 minutes and 2 seconds per added move. The tournament is accredited by FIDE and is valid for both Bulgarian and international ratings. In addition to Accedia volunteers, we have 13 accredited judges who will help with the organization and make sure everything is in order.

Would you give us more information about the organization of such an event?

Organizing such an event requires a lot of time and effort. Now is the time to thank my family for putting up with me for the last 2 months! The current pandemic situation makes it even more challenging, because we have to think about a lot of details. For example, the distance between the tables, their overall arrangement, safety equipment and other similar things. As with every job, the most important thing is to have the right team behind you. Both my colleagues from Accedia and the chairwoman of SC Elite – Veneta Petkova, help me with the organization. The partnership between the two teams, Accedia and our fellow chess players, turned out very well, because we mutually filled in the gaps and enriched our knowledge. We bet on our strengths to get a unique event for Bulgaria.

What connection do you find between the world of technologies and chess? Do you need to be a good chess player in order to be a good IT professional?

Certainly, whether you are a good or a weak chess player does not make you a good or a weak IT specialist. Yes, there is a lot of logic and consistency in both areas, but in both chess and IT, for me, the most important thing is the passion with which you do things. If you are consistent and put your heart into it, then you will be satisfied with the result.

Do you often host such events and how do you attract participants?

At Accedia we organize events, most of which are on technical topics, aimed at IT professionals.This is the first time we are organizing a tournament of this scale. The attraction of the participants was organic, the news about the tournament spread from person to person. Only a few days after the announcement of the event, we had already filled half the capacity. This again proved my thesis that there is a serious hunger for this type of initiative.

Spreading diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI)  amongst everyone is not a one-day-task, right?

We told you that March is the most colourful month of the year, dedicated to women empowerment, leadership and inclusion.

Well, we believe that all months during spring deserve equal rights too 🙂 Just because of that we decided to extend our March Challenge and compound it with another initiative- The European Diversity Month 2021.

If you haven’t heard about this before, let me explain a little bit more.

The European Diversity Month raises awareness of the importance of diversity and inclusion in our workplaces and in the society throughout the whole European Union. It celebrates organisations’ efforts in promoting equality and diverse teams in the workplace and in creating inclusive working environments.

The European Commission has been committed to promoting diversity and inclusion and to combatting discrimination through legislation for a very long time. Now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we believe that spreading this idea is the best thing we can do.

And if this does not sound familiar to you, it means that you haven’t yet taken part in our March Challenge. But don’t be sad, nothing is impossible, we are still accepting applications.

We want to spread this initiative amongst public institutions, private companies, non-profit organisations, cities etc and work together to build equal and inclusive IT environments.

Our challenge cannot be put into time-borders, especially when so many of you showed a great interest in this topic.

Joining these two projects will give us time to listen to more stories, enlarge our scopes, spread our voice and show greater interest in this hot topic.

Let’s all stand for diversity and act about it!

Let’s celebrate digital advancement and champion the women forging innovation through technology!

So how did you become organizers of HackAUBG, which is just around the corner?  

Mira Radoslavova: Let me just backtrack a little. Basically, the hackathon is being around for 5 or 6 years and it started as Hack Blagoevgrad, which was organized by the precursor of The Hub, who was again a student in AUBG. But we became organizers when we joined The Hub since this is a yearly event, organized by our club.

Miroslav Yordanov: Basically the organization of the event is a team effort and almost all of the Hub’s members participate in organizing it. We have different teams which are tasked with the different aspects of the event. We have a development department which is tasked with creating the environment, logistics department which organizes the event itself and coordinates all of the teams and we have the marketing team which is responsible for promoting the event and spreading the word in general. We have about 40 club members so all of us are doing something for HackAUBG.

Can you tell us what we can expect from the event, coming later in February? 

Christina Borisova: As we already mentioned, the hackathon is our biggest event and we spend about 6 months in preparation to make sure that we prepare the best competition for the students. We invite students and young professionals to take part in the competition and it lasts for 3 days and this year the dates are 26th to 28th of February. We invite all the participants to come and join us in this adventure and create software and solutions for the future. We also have a topic that is not revealed until the date of the competition beginning and we have quite a big interest.

And how can you attend the event? You said earlier that it’s not necessary to be a programmer. 

Mira: To attend the hackathon you have to put together a team of 3 to 6 people. Of course, the core of the challenge of the hackathon is creating some type of software solution, so some part of your team must have a technical, engineering background. But it’s not necessary for everyone to have it. In the end, the project is to create some type of product that will be on the market. That’s why you also need designers, business-oriented people, and some marketing-oriented people. For them at the end of the weekend, after they’ve been developing for 48 hours or a little bit more, they have this presentation (on Sunday afternoon), when the jury decides which prototype of the product has been developed and has been developed to the best extend and which has the best concept.

You mentioned the jury, so who is going to judge on the event?

Mira: The jury so far has not been announced completely but they are for now AUBG professors and hopefully we’ll have some more from the Computer Science panel in our university. Also, we have one AUBG alumna and her name is Ekaterina Marinova, and another alumnus who is also the founder of the club. His name is Christo Georgiev.

Is organizing online easier or harder? You said that this is the second online edition, so what are the differences between the organization of the physical attendance and online? 

Christina: So this is the 5th edition of the hackathon and we are very used to organizing it on the ground and experience the whole magic of the hackathon. But now since we had to change things to online, it’s definitely been a challenge for us and for the whole team to prepare and create this different format for the competitors. We are really trying our best to bring the best experience for our participants because it’s harder when it’s online, but we are very happy with how our preparation is going and we hope to provide our participants with a great and memorable experience.

What platforms are you using for the event? 

Mira: We’re going to be using Zoom for the video calls, which will be the opening ceremony, the presentations, and the awards and also part of smaller calls between the participants and the organizers, and perhaps even the mentors. But we’ll also be live-streaming everything on Facebook.

There are not a lot of hackathons with money price, and HackAUBG has one. Is this more motivating for the contestants and also who are the sponsors? 

Mira: Sponsors are usually Bulgarian tech companies that have an interest in offering internships or some type of junior positions to the participants of the hackathon. This is why we attract so many active sponsors to the hackathon because they are looking to hire some of the contestants. For example some of them this year are Infragistics, Mareli Systems, VMware and etc. We have many and all of them you can find on our website.

What are the other challenges in front of the contestants? 

Mira: I guess the major challenge is just to develop a working product.

Miroslav: I think the hardest part is working in a team and managing the team because each of you will have different tasks in order for the product to succeed and to be the best that it can be.

I’m asking this because there’s a rumor, or maybe it’s a fact, that a lot of teams attending hackathons don’t possess the business knowledge, which is very important and can be a step back in a matter of market development at some later point.

Christina: Being a programmer doesn’t certainly mean that you can win a hackathon on your own, you need to have a team of people with different background knowledge so to be able to develop the project the best way possible.

Are there any successful startups that came from earlier editions of HackAUBG, because as we know, some of the brightest ideas in the IT industry are coming exactly from hackathons?

Mira: Well, we haven’t done background checks on every single participant, but as far as we know, we are still looking for that special team that is going to take their projects to the next level and be courageous enough to develop that into a full product.

A lot of great ideas have been abandoned after the end of a hackathon and not developed further, which is kind of sad. So as organizers do you offer any additional support to some of the teams after the event? 

Mira: As far as we can support them after the event is to leave them with the companies that our sponsors. The Hub is part of the American University, so we are not like an organization that can support some team to its full journey, let’s say. But if someone reach out to us we will definitely try to link them with professionals that can eventually help them with their product.

Christina: We’re very happy to have partnering organizations that help us provide everything needed to our participants to further develop their project and as an example, we’re very happy that UNICEF Bulgaria supported our event last year and organized a fundraising training for the winning teams at the end of the hackathon. This was to help them think more perspective about how to develop their business idea and project itself.

And how do the teams form?

Mira: So there’s one of two options. They can know each other from the hackathon and decide to register as a team – they go to the same university for example or they’ve been together on a previous hackathon. But if they decide to register as a single participant or two people or three, and they are looking for other team members, then we will assist them in finding more team members for the group. If they are looking for a developer, then we can try to scour for them. It’s the same if they’re looking for a designer or a marketing person. We’re happy to help. But as always – it’s not an exact science so it’s not easy. But the bigger part of the teams already knows each other.