GitLab, the DevOps management platform, has released its 2022 Global DevSecOps survey, which reveals that 47% of DevOps teams across all industries now have full test automation. That’s an increase of 25% in 2021 and four times the number in 2020, according to the report. And the accelerating shift to CI/CD is highlighted by the fact that 53% of respondents said their testing is happening as code is being written, up from 32% last year.
Because of this increase, 27% of teams that contributed to the survey are now able to deploy continuously, while 14% deploy once a day, and 29% deploy every few days. 60% of teams report they are releasing faster than ever before.
Testing was the single most significant bottleneck reported in the three previous years’ survey. Now it is only one of five equally likely factors causing release delays, alongside code development, code review, security analysis, and test data management.
The survey found 31% of teams are using AI/ML for code review before being viewed by a human, almost double the 16% reported last year. ModelOps – an evolution of MLOps to include continuous retraining of the models developed in MLOps – is reported to be used by 62% of respondents. Only 5% said they had no plans to institute AI/ML in their DevOps practices.
On tools and services, there was a dramatic jump in the number using a low/no-code tool in their DevOps, jumping from 25% to 66% of respondents.
Nearly three quarters of DevOps teams are using a DevOps platform or plan to this year, with another 21% to follow within three years. Their reasoning for using a platform included improved security, cost and time savings, and easier automation.
However, an overreliance on tools was highlighted as a risk by survey respondents with 44% saying that they use between two and five tools, and another 41% use between six and ten. In a response to that increase in tools used, 69% of respondents said they want to consolidate their toolchains because of issues with monitoring, development delays, or simply unhappy developers. And 37% complained that toolchain maintenance distracts resources away from other work, including compliance
In terms of security, 53% of developers run static application security testing (SAST) scans and 55% employ dynamic application security testing (DAST) scans, up from 44%. Security is now seen as a shared responsibility, with 53% of security teams saying they were mainly responsible, but as part of a bigger team, increasing 25% since 2021.
Looking forward, across development, security, and operations teams, the top areas of investment are AI and MLOps, security, and cloud computing.
The survey, completed in May, received 5,001 responses globally, with 75% coming from the United States. GitLab is a California-based DevOps platform, founded in Ukraine in 2011. Its platform features tools for enabling CI/CD and software compliance.
