With the growing adoption of cloud-based IT infrastructures, the proliferation of mobile and IoT devices, and the rise of social media, companies of all sizes, across all industries are amassing huge quantities of data in differing variety, velocity, veracity and validity.

Recently, I've seen a lot of articles and conversation around DevOps. DevOps is a set of practices that automates the processes between software development and IT teams, in order to enable be shorter development cycles, increased deployment frequency, and more dependable releases all in conjunction with business needs.

Formed in 2016, Paddy Power Betfair (PPB) is the world’s largest publicly quoted sports betting and gaming company, bringing “excitement to life” for five million customers worldwide. The merger of Paddy Power and Betfair in 2016 created an additional data challenge for an already highly data-driven organization. The merged company had to bring together 70TB of data, from dozens of sources, into an integrated platform.

Recently I found myself in a predicament that many of you can relate to, trying to update an aging application that has become too difficult to manage and too costly to continue operating. As we started to talk about what to do, we concluded it was time to start decomposing that application into smaller more manageable pieces.

DevOps is a set of practices that automates the processes between software development and IT teams so they can build, test, and release software more quickly and reliably. The concept of DevOps is founded on building a culture of collaboration between IT and business teams, which have historically functioned in relative siloes. The promised benefits include increased trust, faster software releases, and the ability to solve critical issues quickly.