Understanding DevOps & bridging the gap from continuous integration to continuous delivery

As part of Agile transformation in past few years we have seen IT organizations adopting continuous integration principles in their software delivery lifecycle, which has improved the efficiency of development teams. With the time it has been realized that this optimization as part of continuous integration - alone - is just not helping to make the entire delivery lifecycle efficient or is not driving the organization efficiency. Unless all the pieces of a software delivery lifecycle work like a well oiled machine - efficiency of organization to optimize the delivery lifecycle can not be met. This is the problem which DevOps tries to address. This paper tries to cover all aspects of Devops applicable to various phases of SDLC and specifically talks about business need, ways to move from continuous integration to continuous delivery and its benefits. Continuous delivery transformation in this paper is explained with a real life case study that how infrastructure can be maintained just in form of code (IAAC). Finally this paper touches upon various considerations one must evaluate before adopting DevOps and what kind of benefits one can expect.