Episode 513: Gil Hoffer on Applying DevOps Practices to Managing Business Applications

DevOps Principles

The integration of DevOps principles into business application management can significantly streamline processes. Gil Hoffer shares his experience with integrating Ravello's back office into Oracle, highlighting the challenges of a manual and tedious deployment process. He emphasizes the importance of making these processes more repeatable and efficient, akin to software or infrastructure DevOps practices 1.

We found ways to make it much more streamlined, repeatable and almost effortless in those parts of their release cycle.

--- Gil Hoffer

By translating business application configurations into text, Salto's solution allows for easier searching, comparing, deploying, and tracking changes across environments, reducing the risk of human error and enhancing efficiency 1.

   

Comparison with IT

Comparing traditional IT infrastructure practices with modern business application management reveals significant differences and opportunities. Gil Hoffer explains how Salto maps configuration spaces to differentiate between metadata and data, focusing on configuration management 2. This approach allows for more efficient management of business applications, similar to how tools like Terraform manage infrastructure.

Our approach is different. We came from an infrastructure point of view, that an organization needs an infrastructure to manage the configuration of all the different business applications.

--- Gil Hoffer

Hoffer notes that while some vendors focus on specific business applications, Salto aims to provide a comprehensive solution that addresses multiple use cases across various applications, offering a broader scope than competitors 2.