Modernizing IT Operations in the Age of DevOps

Guidance on Evolving Skill Sets for the Cloud

DevOps adoption continues to rise as enterprises migrate to the cloud as part of their digital transformation initiatives. The combination of DevOps and cloud infrastructure is disrupting the traditional job expectations of enterprise infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals.

The days of physically provisioning servers and environments are quickly coming to a close. Provisioning cloud environments is done through code and related API calls. As a result, I&O professionals are being pressed to learn coding and software development life cycle best practices in order to integrate into DevOps initiatives.

This paper is intended to offer guidance for I&O professionals so they can evolve their skill set and become an integral part of DevOps initiatives and competent in cloud infrastructure code.

What's inside

  • Evolving Skill Sets — This paper addresses the evolving roles of IT Operations in the Digital Age, including the move to the cloud.
  • Expert Authors — This paper is written by experienced leaders who have led their own successful leadership transformations within large enterprise organizations.
  • Clear Guidance — This paper offers clear guidance for I&O professionals so they can evolve their skillset and become an integral part of DevOps initiatives and competent in cloud infrastructure code.
  • All Levels — Change Agents can come from anywhere on the org chart. This paper directly provides guidance on how to lead change no matter your role or title.
Publication Date
2018
Pages
19
Topics
DevOps Metrics & Measurements · Software Delivery & Architecture
Formats
epub · pdf
License
Creative Commons BY-NC-SA

About the authors

5 authors
Josh AtwellSenior Director, Product and Solutions Marketing, ScienceLogic

Affiliation as of 2026-09-07

Multi-disciplined marketing and technology leader who has moved from hands on technology to leading marketing and advocacy teams to improve customer enablement and engagement.

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Jason CoxTechnology Executive

Affiliation as of 2026-09-30

Jason Cox is a technology executive, engineer, researcher, and longtime builder of large-scale systems. His work spans artificial intelligence, AI research and engineering, site reliability engineering, DevOps, developer experience, and enterprise technology, with a focus on turning emerging technologies into practical, scalable solutions. Jason is a frequent speaker who enjoys making complex ideas accessible, practical, and inspiring. He is a co-author of Investments Unlimited: A Novel About DevOps, Security, Audit Compliance, and Thriving in the Digital Age, an open-source contributor, and a firm believer that the future of technology is ultimately about amplifying people and elevating the human experience.

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Damon EdwardsCo-Founder & CEO, Attestify

Affiliation as of 2026-08-31

Damon Edwards is Senior Director, Product at PagerDuty. Previously, Damon was a cofounder of Rundeck, the makers of the popular open-source runbook automation platform acquired by PagerDuty in 2020. Prior to Rundeck, Damon was the Managing Partner of DTO Solutions, a DevOps and Operations Improvement Consultancy. Damon has spent the past 23 years working with both the technology and business ends of IT Operations. He is noted for being a leader in porting cutting-edge DevOps techniques to large-scale enterprise organizations. Damon is a frequent conference speaker and writer who focuses on DevOps, SRE, and Operations improvement topics. Damon is active in the international DevOps community, co-host of the DevOps Cafe podcast, and a content chair for Gene Kim’s DevOps Enterprise Summit.

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Mark ImbriacoHead of Engineering, Railway
Mark SchwartzExecutive in Residence, Amazon Web Services

Affiliation as of 2026-07-24

Mark Schwartz is an iconoclastic CIO and a playful crafter of ideas, an inveterate purveyor of lucubratory prose. He has been an IT leader in organizations small and large, public, private, and nonprofit. As an Enterprise Strategist for Amazon Web Services, he uses his CIO experience to bring strategies to enterprises or enterprises to strategies, and bring both to the cloud. As the CIO of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, he provoked the federal government into adopting Agile and DevOps practices. He is pretty sure that when he was the CIO of Intrax Cultural Exchange he was the first person ever to use business intelligence and supply chain analytics to place au pairs with the right host families. Mark speaks frequently on innovation, bureaucratic implications of DevOps, and using Agile processes in low-trust environments. With a BS in computer science from Yale, a master’s in philosophy from Yale, and an MBA from Wharton, Mark is either an expert on the business value of IT or else he just thinks about it a lot.

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