It is hard to imagine a successful business conducting its IT operations without using DevOps services in 2020. What is much easier to imagine is working with the sub-par quality of DevOps skills, as highly-talented DevOps engineers are never unemployed. Outsourcing your IT operations to a trustworthy DevOps services provider can be a solution — but how to find a good DevOps managed services company?
There are multiple ways to contact a dedicated DevOps team, depending on the specifics of the project you are after. Naturally, if you are extremely short on funds and cannot afford to hire a skilled DevOps engineer in-house full-time, you can work with freelancers from TopTal or Upwork. Look for top-rated specialists with relevant expertise within your budget limits and work with them.
However, many businesses have an aversion to providing access to their mission-critical systems to outsiders, regardless of their reputation. In this case, you might want to hire a remote DevOps expertise from an IT outsourcing company. This involves signing legally-binding documents like NDA and SLA, which protect both parties. Due to such an approach, you get instant access to skilled DevOps engineers and stay on the safe side.
Besides, hiring nearshoring or offshoring team helps save a ton of money, as the major part of their costs is formed by their wages, which depend on the cost of living. For example, hiring a full-time Python developer in the US costs around $140 k a year, according to Glassdoor, while hiring the same level of expertise in Eastern Europe costs merely $40k a year. You might say that hiring such a talent in India costs $15k a year only — but the low quality of services of Indian contractors has long ago become a byword.
Thus said, how to ensure you deal with a reliable DevOps managed services provider? here is a brief checklist.
- Gain access to any available DevOps expertise — even chatting online with AWS or Google Cloud support can suffice — to translate your expectations and project requirements into a clear specification of DevOps expertise and skills required. Most likely, the list will include the terms like DevOps services, AWS (or Google) cloud infrastructure design and implementation, CI/CD configuration, app containerization, Kubernetes cluster configuration and management, monitoring and alerting implementation, etc.
- Google for these terms and look for the companies that provide such services. Naturally, you will get lots of ads for AWS, Google and other platforms — but you will also get links to IT outsourcing companies that specialize in these services. These companies differ in team size and magnitude of projects, but they all are reliable contractors with good reputation — or they wouldn’t make it to the first page of the SERPs, SEO alone cannot make that.
- You can check this reputation by looking for independent ratings and customer reviews for these companies on the platforms like TopTal, UpWork, GoodFirms and Clutch and many others. You can also contact these reviewer companies to get firsthand feedback on their experience with the DevOps contractors. You can also get an evaluation of the average project costs to make sure it fits your budget.
- Once you shortlist the companies that provide the services you need, have good customer reviews and industry-wide recognition and accolades — feel free to reach out to them and have several technical calls. The company that makes the most fitting offer will become your reliable DevOps managed services provider.
Follow this simple checklist and you will be able to find a trustworthy partner that will handle your IT operations and help your projects succeed!