DevOps in E-commerce software development: Demand for Containerization

This thesis aimed at researching trends in software delivery as well as the underlying changes made by companies in order to enhance their technological capabilities and be a stronger competitor on the market. This research was implemented and documented under the strict supervision of the Vaimo Group. The research was done in a company that decided to apply a set of capabilities to a newly developed CI/CD pipeline based on the containerization technology. Description of the implemented and newly developed pipelines was provided to highlight capabilities of the new containerized software delivery pipeline. As part of this research, in order to find an attitude of professionals in software delivery towards different technological capabilities, survey was carried out. Moreover, a survey was designed to benchmark current CI/CD pipeline using metrics such as stress, efficiency and visualization. Along with assessing implemented and potential solutions, survey questioned respondents on the DevOps culture, continuous integration and delivery practices. The research revealed a set of capabilities and cultural patterns that developers see as most beneficial for the future of software delivery for an e-commerce solutions provider. These capabilities include automatic deployments, the usage of Git VCS, deployment to cloud environment using containers. In addition to that, professionals revealed positive attitude to taking operational responsibility and provided feedback on deficiencies of currently implemented CI/CD pipeline. The conclusions following from the survey were as well confirmed by a correlation between a given capability/solution and competence as measured via self-evaluation. Having statistically valid data and conclusive decision in favor of or against a given technological capability allows e-commerce providers to build a software delivery pipeline that adresses the needs of the organization and its clients