Azure DevOps: An Introduction, Services, Projects, Benefits, Drawbacks

ContentsAzure DevOps is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform that provides several tools for better team collaboration. It also provides tools for automated build processes, version control, project management, testing, release management, package management, and much more. Azure DevOps was launched in October 2018 and has been a feature-rich platform since then.

In this article, we will find all aspects of Azure DevOps. What is Azure DevOps? Why use Azure? Azure Services, setting up Azure, and much more. So let’s get started. Use the Table of Contents to jump to any topic directly.

What is DevOps?

The term DevOps originates from the fusion of two words, Development, and Operations. DevOps can have different meanings to different people and organizations.

1. According to Amazon Web Services (AWS): Amazon Web Services (AWS) DevOps is the combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that increases an organization’s ability to deliver applications and services at high velocity: evolving and improving products at a faster pace than organizations using traditional software development and infrastructure management processes.
2. According to Microsoft: DevOps is the union of people, processes, and products to enable continuous delivery of value to our customers.

Read More about DevOps in the article- What is DevOps – The Ultimate Guide For Beginners

Benefits of DevOps

• Improved Collaboration among teams.
• Reduction in Lead time from commit to deployment (Lead time is the time it takes for a feature to make it to the customer).
• Rapid Deployment: Software is deployed more frequently.
• Scaling is more efficient and involves less risk.

So, DevOps is not just a role, job title, methodology, or piece of software. DevOps is a field that takes skills from Development and Operations to create and run applications more effectively. No doubt, you get a very handsome salary, Check out salary structure and skills required for DevOps Engineer.

Become a DevOps Engineer, Sart your journey with this Complete DevOps Roadmap – Beginner to Advanced

What is Azure DevOps?

Azure DevOps is a Software as a service (SaaS) provided by Microsoft Azure that will reduce human efforts and automates the deployment and testing of an application. You can use no.of services to deploy the application or complete the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) in a fast and efficient manner. previously Azure DevOps is also called Microsoft vVisual Studio Team Services(VSTS).

Azure DevOps is a Software as a service (SaaS) that uses certain services to complete the software development lifecycle efficiently with less amount of time following are some services which is used by Azure DevOps.

1. Azure Boards
2. Azure Pipeline
3. Azure Repos
4. Azure Artifacts
5. Azure Test Plans

Services Used in Azure DevOps

Azure DevOps is a platform that will make it easier and more efficient to implement a DevOps-based solution in your organization. It contains a range of services that cover the complete software development life-cycle. These are:

Azure Boards	Azure Boards is a tool that helps teams plan, track, visualize, and discuss the work that needs to be done. It offers four different processes to choose from: CMMI, Scrum, Agile, Basic.
Azure Pipelines	Azure Pipelines is a cloud service that can be used to automatically build, test, and deploy any code project. It is a cloud-agnostic CI/CD platform with support for containers or Kubernetes and works with any language or project type.
Azure Repos	Azure Repos provides unlimited, cloud-hosted private, and public Git repos.
Azure Artifacts	Azure Artifacts lets you create, host, and share packages. It also provides integrated package management with support for Maven, npm, Python, and NuGet package feeds from public or private sources.
Azure Test Plans	Azure Test Plans provides manual and exploratory testing solutions. Azure DevOps is also compatible with various third-party tools.

Also Learn: How to Use Azure DevOps to Automate Your Software Development?

Azure DevOps is flexible, platform-agnostic, and cloud-agnostic. This means that you don’t have to use all the services provided by Azure and Azure DevOps for your needs. You can choose the best services according to your requirements without any trouble.

Azure DevOps is not platform dependent i.e. it doesn’t matter whether you are using Windows/Linux/Mac or whether you use .NET, C/C++, Python, or any other language for your development, Azure DevOps is compatible with almost all platforms, and languages. The story does not end here, it also does not matter whether you deploy your software to Azure, AWS, or GCP, continuous delivery is supported by all these cloud services.

How to Create the Azure DevOps Project?

You can start the Azure DevOps project by simply following the steps mentioned below. And you can use multiple services to automate the workflow.

Step 1: Set up a Microsoft Azure DevOps account. by clicking on My Azure DevOps Organizationnization.

Follow the instructions after completion of that you can start using the Azure DevOps.

Step 2: Create an organization with the name of your company or if it is a personal project give the name of the organization according to your interest. The organization represents the no.of projects that you are going to deal with.

After clicking on create a new organization you can give the name of the organization as shown below.

Your Azure DevOps dashboard will like as shown in the image below.

Step 3: Setup the Azure Repos which is a version control tool by which you push or pull the code depending upon your need the version control that is used in Azure Repo is the most commonly used Repo which is GIT.

Step 4: Set up the pipeline for automating the continuous integration and continuous deployment by using pipelines. Pipeline plays a major role in DevOps and Azure DevOps which will reduce human efforts. You can set up your pipeline by clicking on Create Pipeline as shown in the following image.

Step 4: Set up the Azure test plans to perform the automated or manual testing on the source code or you can also integrate some automation tools with the Azure test plan as shown in the following figure.

By following the steps mentioned above and the service used you can set up your project with Azure DevOps end-to-end.

Who Uses Azure DevOps?

Azure DevOps can be used by any team who wants to make the workflow automate most primarily Azure DevOps is used by the Software Develops, DevOps Engineers, and Testing Engineers.

When coming to organizations there are some famous organizations that are using Azure DevOps some of them are mentioned below.

• Netflix: Netflix is a company that will have continuous updates on the source code to satisfy their customers by using Azure DevOps will reduce the cost and time of the company and can deliver most efficiently to the end users.

• Microsoft: We all know that Microsoft is one of the biggest organizations in the whole world it is very important for them to reduce the latency or give a hundred percent to the users who are using Microsoft products it can be achieved easily with the help of Azure DevOps.

The above are a few companies that are currently using Azure DevOps. other than that there are more companies like Google, Uber, and so on which are using Azure DevOps.

Azure DevOps Benefits

Azure DevOps is a feature-rich, flexible platform that can be used to evolve DevOps practices within an organization. Here are the benefits of using Azure DevOps.

• Reliability: Azure DevOps is a reliable SaaS platform with regular maintenance and support.
• Scalability: Azure DevOps makes it way easier for organizations to scale as per their needs without any hassle.
• Better Collaboration: Services like Azure Boards improve the collaboration among teams within an organization to a great extent.
• Better Management through Work Items: Azure DevOps makes it way easier to coordinate the management of your systems with Work Items.
• Access to the latest features: Azure DevOps users get access to new features every 3 weeks.
• Hassle-free upgrade: Upgrading and patching are way easier for Azure DevOps organizations.

Azure DevOps Drawbacks

• Cost: The main drawback of Azure DevOps has cost in DevOps you can use open-source tools like Jenkins, and GitHub for free but if you use Azure DevOps after certain usage you will be charged for the usage.
• Complex to Learn: Learning Azure DevOps is not easy as DevOps. You need to read thoroughly the documentation to learn Azure DevOps in depth.
• Complex to Integrate: You can integrate the tools which are not included in Azure DevOps but while configuring you should be very careful you need to check each and every step twice to integrate perfectly.
• Suitable for Large Projects: The projects which are very large it is very easy to deploy those applications then easily when compared to small projects. It will be complex for small projects.

Difference Between Azure DevOps and DevOps

Azure DevOps is closely integrated with the Azure cloud. However, it has a few major advantages over Open Source DevOps. For example, when you build your pipeline in Open Source DevOps, you need to create an agent machine from your end where the pipeline would be built. To know more about the Difference Between Azure DevOps and DevOps less

Frequently Asked Questions On Azure DevOps

Is Azure DevOps a Tool?

Azure DevOps is a set of tools which are used to make the deployments automated.

Is Azure DevOps a Cloud Service?

Azure DevOps is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform offered by Microsoft Azure Cloud.

How do I learn Azure DevOps for beginners?

As a beginner you can learn Azure DevOps in 5-6 months by spending significant time to learn Top 10 Azure Skills in 2024.