The study indicated a direct correlation between the quality of Dev/Ops interactions and revenue growth. Respondents were first asked how much their company’s revenue had grown in the previous 12 months, then asked about the quality of interactions between Dev and Ops. Some 92% of organizations that reported those interactions to be ‘excellent’ or ‘above average’ experienced revenue increases of 10% or more. Meanwhile, the 8% of companies that reported Dev/Ops interactions to be ‘average’ or ‘poor’ had revenue increases of less than 10%, or they were flat/decreased.

The bottom line? Companies that excel at DevOps interactions are 11 times more likely to see double-digit annual revenue growth. It doesn’t stop at revenue growth either. According to EMA, 49% of organizations also agree that accelerated delivery frequency leads to higher customer satisfaction. And 35% find it enables them to be more agile and competitive.

The EMA study also found that the biggest ‘bottleneck’ slowing down the Continuous Delivery pipeline is manual troubleshooting processes to deal with problems arising from production changes (44% of organizations agree). This indicates that errors continue to slip through accelerated delivery processes into production. Automation mitigates the need for manual intervention—ensuring errors don’t make it into production. Audit trails also make it easier to track down any lingering production issues.

Organizations are waking up to the value of automation. Asked which area they would most likely invest in within the next 12 months, 35% would invest in ‘deployment/release automation supporting continuous delivery’. This makes sense: automation can help ensure Continuous Delivery processes are reliable and safe, time after time. It enables organizations to control what is deployed where, by whom and when. And it cuts the lead time needed to push changes into production.

Often overlooked is the database which can threaten the integrity of software development processes. It holds essential business information which require special attention. For example, database changes must be synchronized with code changes to proactively prevent conflicts that may impact production. Furthermore, the database must have its own automated deployment and release method, as well as testing tools and continuous delivery procedures. Check out this popular eBook to get you on the path of continues delivery for your database developments.