You are a developer; you have been stuck at your DevOps job for over 3 years. You’ve never really liked the DevOps in big companies, either. However, you have strong communication skills, a knack for management, and a passion for innovation that so few of your colleagues have.
You constantly think of pivoting to new career paths in tech, whether that’s frontend, project manager, developer relations, or even waiting to get promoted to UX design.
That sounds very nice; in fact, it is all very achievable. But that’s not what you would want, is it?
You see yourself as a pioneer, a trendsetter; one might even say as a founder. If you see yourself as a founder or just love the idea of startups, you no doubt ponder your business and entrepreneurial ideas actively.
In the tech world, there are always trends in startups regarding what startups of a particular time are building.
In the 2010s, there were startups focused on mobile apps. In 2020-2022, there were startups all focused on Web3 and decentralized technologies. In 2023, we can most definitely conclude the startup trend to be SaaS-based. This is where the new career path of DevOps is entrenching itself.
What Is SaaS?
There are a lot of sources that give the exact definition, but let's define it ourselves. Formally, SaaS stands for Software-as-a-Service. This is software that you rent out or make available for monetary purchase. You made this software as a service that people are paying for.
What is so special about SaaS businesses? Two main reasons. SaaS businesses make the most consistent amount of money, and making a SaaS business has never been easier. These two factors make SaaS very alluring to every would-be IT entrepreneur. How do we know this to be true?
According to Clara LoCricchio of firstpagestrategy.com:
In 2023, the SaaS market grew significantly to an esstimated 273.5 Billion. A 13.6% increase over 2022.
This statistic is as accurate as Bitcoin’s price fluctuations. SaaS is one of the fastest-growing branches of the tech industry. In terms of monetization, competing parts of the tech industry are subscription-based and ad-revenue-based software types.
SaaS is the growing king among these 3 software monetization giants.
What Is DevOps?
According to Amazon Web Services (AWS):
Under a DevOps model, development and operations teams are no longer “siloed.” Sometimes, these two teams are merged into a single team where the engineers work across the entire application lifecycle
In short, someone with a DevOps role is essentially doing something on the software solutions team (or one of the tech teams) and works in tandem with management, customer service, or even marketing.
You might ask yourself, “As someone on the DevOps career path, why should I care about SaaS?” SaaS companies are where DevOps positions and roles shine the brightest and are most helpful. That is where you can make the best impact. Now, let us look at the 3 ways you could do that.
Before we get into the list, if you want a refresher on the different DevOps types, here is a link to an article I wrote on them, aptly titled “Your Guide to The Suits of DevOps.”
1. IaaS & PaaS:
Both PaaS and IaaS are sub-branches of SaaS. PaaS stands for Platform-as-a-Service, and IaaS stands for Infrastructure-as-a-Service. PaaS are web services that do certain or many web activities for the user instead of you doing or making them yourself.
IaaS sells the user necessary infrastructure elements to help in the construction and services of their web-based projects. For a more detailed explanation, see www.paddle.com.
According to Statista, the PaaS global market cap is expected to rise significantly, and in the year 2023, it will be 115 Billion USD. IaaS is projected to reach a 110 Billion USD market cap by 2024. Why is this important?
This is important because, as a person in DevOps, your skills will be ever more needed. IaaS and PaaS services require a lot of customer service analysis and marketing that can adequately convey the complexities of the technologies in simple terms.
If you are a DevOps personnel specifically working with networks or the main dev team as well as customer service or marketing…..then IaaS and PaaS companies are in your interest to pay attention to.
2. Generative AI:
According to techtarget.com, Generative AI is Artificial Intelligence that, depending on its use case, can produce digital pieces of text, imagery, audio, and, at times, synthetic data.
How does generative AI fit into DevOps? Most DevOps jobs touch on or even wholly focus on automation tasks. Some DevOps professionals solely focus on automating tasks within their assigned teams. Generative AI completely changes the automation game. e.g., DevOps working with the development team and marketing.
They use generative AI to speed up their marketing tasks (slogans, tutorial scripts, social media post text). They can also use generative AI to help with code testing.
3. RevOps Relevance:
As DevOps career pathways increase in complexity and depth, their ways of doing things also change. What do I mean? The DevOps personnel may feel a stronger affinity for their company's tech or programmatic side, but this doesn't mean the humanities side of their area is ignored. This is evidenced by the introduction of RevOps as a DevOps integration strategy.
What is RevOps? According to techtarget.com, Revops can be defined as:
The strategic integration of sales, marketing and service departments to provide a better end-to-end view to administration and management, while leaving day-to-day processes within the departments.
I know what you are thinking, “Isn’t RevOps its own department and job type?” Yes, it is. Even so, this means DevOps roles, which intersect with the marketing or sales departments, will then be required to do more in these departments rather than focus more on the development departments.
It also means if you currently have a position in a DevOps role and want to transition into a similar job but more focused on the humanities part, then this is for you.
As a DevOps developer, you must know that your job may become more tech-focused soon as RevOps job roles grow and gain traction.
It is important to remember both significant and minor SaaS companies have noticed these 3 crucial trends in the industry. IaaS & PaaS are soon to be the most successful subsets of SaaS. RevOps will emerge as a job position, even siphoning some DevOps role responsibilities. Not to mention generative AI.
It will be the biggest disruptor in the DevOps roles as it quite literally improves every process of all technical automation processes. One question does remain….how ready are you as a DevOps developer for SaaSy 2024?
Feature image from saasmarketer.io