JAXenter: What are your DevOps predictions for 2018? What should we pay attention to?

Michiel Rook:  I think the focus will shift more and more to resilience and operability.

JAXenter: What makes a good DevOps practitioner?

Michiel Rook: I don’t think that “a” DevOps practitioner exists, necessarily. Ultimately, the success of DevOps depends very much on company culture. So, in that sense I think a good DevOps practitioner is one that contributes positively to the culture in their company, fostering communication, cooperation, ownership, and responsibility.

JAXenter: Will DevOps stay as it is now or is there a chance that we’ll be calling it DevSecOps from now on?

Michiel Rook: Sec definitely has its place in DevOps. I’m not sure whether we need to start extending the phrase to allow for.

JAXenter: Do you think more organizations will move to cloud in 2018?

Michiel Rook: With cloud services becoming available in more countries, more and more companies will be able to move, especially those that have a (legal) requirement that their data should be stored in a particular country.

JAXenter: Will containers-as-a-service become a thing in 2018? What platform should we keep an eye on?

Michiel Rook: I think containers-as-a-service has already become a thing in 2017, to be honest. Obviously, Kubernetes is the platform to watch (and the platform I’m most excited about). Especially now that Azure (AKS) and even Amazon (EKS) have jumped onto the Kubernetes train, I don’t think there’s anybody that doubts the validity of that platform.

JAXenter: Is Java ideal for microservices developments? Should companies continue to invest resources in this direction?

Michiel Rook: Java definitely works. Frameworks like Spring Boot and Play! are well established and offer great functionality. It all depends on the use case though: use what works and is applicable to your particular problem.

JAXenter: Containers (and orchestration tools) are all the rage right now. Will general interest in containers grow this year?

Michiel Rook: SIn general I think that, technically, pretty much every legacy application can be containerized. The benefits of container technology are clear, so I guess we’ll see more of that happening.

JAXenter: How will serverless change in 2018? Will it have an impact on DevOps? How?

Michiel Rook: Serverless is one more step towards “NoOps” (even though I dislike that term). I.e., running on API-driven infrastructure that just works and you don’t have to think about, as a commodity.

JAXenter: Will serverless be seen as a competitor to container-based cloud infrastructure or will they somehow go hand in hand?

Michiel Rook: I think there’s plenty of room for both technologies.

Thank you very much!