The roles and activities performed by IT professionals have evolved dramatically over the past ten years due to the convergence of modern development technologies, cloud platforms, and as-a-service offerings that can significantly improve overall productivity. Today, many of these professionals find themselves in hybrid roles that combine traditional development activities with activities that formerly were associated with operations professionals who historically had few or no development-oriented responsibilities. A new International Data Corporation (IDC) report provides an extended census and forecast with detail for both traditional IT operations roles and these new hybrid roles.

"The census data shows that a dramatic, once-in-a-generation shift in the composition of the IT workforce is underway. This shift is akin to what took place during the years from 1997 to 2002 when the emergence of the commercial internet and the .com era turned priorities upside down for much of corporate IT and led to the hiring of vast numbers of web developers and networking experts," said Al Gillen, group vice president, Software Development and Open Source, IDC. "The increased adoption of cloud computing is driving similar transitions today in IT teams supporting this modern deployment model."

In developing this data set, IDC used the following definitions to describe the roles broken out in the study:

• DataOps uses a combination of technologies and methods with a focus on quality for consistent and continuous delivery of data value, combining integrated and process-oriented perspectives on data with automation and methods analogous to agile software engineering.
• DevOps uses collaborative, agile approaches paired with extensive automation development pipelines, testing, infrastructure configuration, provisioning, security controls, and life-cycle continuous integration (CI) for continuous development and continuous delivery (CD).
• DevSecOps uses a methodology that asserts that security needs to be prioritized at the beginning of the DevOps delivery pipeline. It enables DevOps teams, collaborating with security, to act as key stakeholders in defining and implementing security policies.
• ITOps uses technology and methods to provide routine, scheduled tasks and unscheduled support activities related to IT systems. ITOps professionals may spend as much as 50% of their time engaged with business users in support, the elicitation of requirements, and performing contingent or secondary business tasks.
• MLOps uses technology and processes to streamline and automate the entire machine learning (ML) life cycle. The key capabilities include managing and automating ML data and pipelines, ML code, and ML models from data ingestion to model deployment, tracking, and monitoring. MLOps uses similar principles to DevOps practices, applied to machine learning processes.
• Platform engineering is a discipline of designing and building toolchains and workflows that enable self-service capabilities focused on managing and optimizing the software delivery process to deploy applications and services to cloud platforms.
• Site reliability engineering (SRE) includes software engineers who build scripts to automate IT operations tasks such as maintenance and support. To enable efficiency and reliability, SRE teams fix operational bugs and remove manual work in rote tasks.
• Systems administrators configure, maintain, and support computer systems and systems of systems using a variety of tools and methods appropriate to the system or systems of systems in use. They may spend as much as 50% of their time engaged with business users in defining key requirements, business goals, and adaptations needed to maintain fit for use and fit for purpose.

At a macro level, the study shows that a substantial shift in the responsibilities of IT professionals will occur over the next five years. The data indicates that IT professionals in the most purely operational roles are facing a transition to a more technical or focused role that very often may involve some level of software development work. Accordingly, the roles of IT operations and system administrators, respectively, are projected to decline at compound annual growth rates (CAGR) of -8.2% and -7.8% over the 2022–2027 forecast period. By comparison, the recently emerging roles of DataOps and MLOps are projected to have CAGRs of 17.9% and 20.1% respectively, although the growth is starting from comparatively small numbers.

DevOps and DevSecOps roles are also forecast to continue growing with DevSecOps roles showing a double-digit CAGR over the forecast period. DevSecOps roles will benefit from the growing application threat landscape and the dependence that organizations have on their software capabilities to be competitive, combined with the recognition that incorporating security as early as possible in the software development life cycle reduces costs and increases quality. DevOps growth will be muted somewhat by the growth in platform engineering roles, which will absorb some of these same functions.

"This census and forecast data was developed as a companion product to IDC's developer census and forecast, rounding out our count of IT professionals involved in today's modern datacenter and overseeing cloud-based deployments," said Arnal Dayaratna, research vice president, Software Development at IDC. "This collaborative effort involved analysts covering artificial intelligence, data management, development, DevOps, DevSecOps, and IT operations and platform services, bringing many key IDC thought leaders together. This data set opens the door for IDC to produce deeper cross tabs of this data in the future."

The report, Worldwide xOps Census and Forecast, 2022–2027 (Doc #US50627023), introduces IDC's xOps census and forecast data for the first time. This data includes worldwide and regional views on the 2022 census and a forecast through 2027 for eight modern IT titles that include at least some operational-level responsibilities. These titles include DataOps, DevOps, DevSecOps, ITOps, MLOps, platform engineering, site reliability engineering, and systems administrator.

About IDC

International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. With more than 1,300 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology, IT benchmarking and sourcing, and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. IDC's analysis and insight helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based technology decisions and to achieve their key business objectives. Founded in 1964, IDC is a wholly owned subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), the world's leading tech media, data, and marketing services company. To learn more about IDC, please visit www.idc.com. Follow IDC on Twitter at @IDC and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the IDC Blog for industry news and insights.

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A new IDC report provides an extended census and forecast with detail for both traditional IT operations roles and these new hybrid roles.