The document discusses DevOps practices at Hiscox, an international insurance company. It provides context on Hiscox and introduces Jonathan Fletcher, the technology architect. It then outlines Hiscox's DevOps journey, including establishing cross-functional teams, shared goals, and a Platform Services Group. The Platform Services Group provides core capabilities like source control, deployment automation, and testing to help break down silos. Hiscox selected IBM UrbanCode Deploy to automate application deployments and help transform a 10 week change cycle to only 2 weeks. The presentation concludes with advocating for a proof of concept with IBM Rational Test Virtualization Server and a discussion on convincing management of the benefits of DevOps.

1. © 2014 IBM Corporation
DevOps @ Hiscox
Jonathan Fletcher
Enterprise Architect
Technology & Platform Lead

2. Me
• Jonathan Fletcher
• Architect in Hiscox Group IT since 2012
• Ex Dev
• Ex Ops
http://enterprisedevops.blogspot.com
http://www.devops.com
@FletcherJofanon
jonathan.fletcher@hiscox.com
1

3. Who are Hiscox?
• International specialist insurer
• $3.0B in GWP
• 2,000 employees
• 28 Offices across 13 countries
• Pioneered online direct selling of business insurance
• Insuring nearly 8,000 IT professionals in the USA
2

4. Agenda
• What does DevOps means to Hiscox?
• Brief history of DevOps at Hiscox
• Patterns and practises of implementing DevOps at Hiscox
• How are IBM helping Hiscox?
• Demo
• Q&A
3

5. Start demo
4

6. DevOps – classical definition
Development Operations
Culture of shared goals that reduces the friction between
Development and Operations
5

7. DevOps friction
Moreprocessreviews
Morechangecontrolreviews
Moredeploymentfreezes
Morestandardscontrolboards
Morefrequentchanges
Lowertoleranceforoutage
Morecomplexapplications
Morecomplexdeployments
Do more!
Do less!
RFC’s
CAB
Deployment guide
Rollback guide
Daily status calls
Staff availability
Issue tracking
Environment
booking
Escalation
processes
Emergency
processes
Small change
processes
etc etcMr. Dev Mr. Ops
6

8. DevTestBizThingyOps
• Why do we think the issue of working well together and aligning
goals is limited to Developers and Operations?
• Shouldn’t everyone involved in the change process work
together to accomplish shared goals?
• DevTestBizThingyOps should be the real name © J.Fletcher
7

9. BermudaUS Europe London MarketsUK
Hiscox yesterday (ish!)ITcapability
Group
development
Group
support
Group
infrastructure
Group testing Group DBA
Group
release and
deployment
Group
architecture
8

10. Hiscox tomorrow (ish!)
Europe
Dev
Support
Testing
DBA
Release
and
deployment
Architecture
UK
Dev
Support
Testing
DBA
Release
and
deployment
Architecture
London market
Dev
Support
Testing
DBA
Release
and
deployment
Architecture
USA
Dev
Support
Testing
DBA
Release
and
deployment
Architecture
Bermuda
Dev
Support
Testing
DBA
Release
and
deployment
Architecture
9

11. Hiscox Model
• Federated
• Cross skilled teams
• Cradle to grave responsibilities
• Shared goals and incentives
• Underpinned by the Platform Services Group
• What started out as an ambition to increase the pace of change
has evolved into “rebooting” the IT team
10

12. Shared goals – a DevOps example
11

13. Platform Services
• Growth of the business is challenging IT to find new and better
ways to do things
• Means worker smarter not harder. Doesn’t mean an ever
increasing head count
• Platform Services helps break down silo’s between teams by
providing a change platform that is re-usable between multiple
teams
• Help others use the platform (they don’t implement themselves!)
12

14. Core platform capabilities
• Source code management
• Artefact management
• Automated application
deployment
• Automated server configuration
• Load performance test
• Automated functional test
• Continuous Integration and
automated code build
• Application Performance
Management
• Agile planning
• Defect management
• More...
13

15. Be careful...
You don’t solve a silo issue by
creating another silo! BAD
Having a team that evangelises
DevOps ideas, concepts and
tooling is GOOD
14

16. How are IBM helping?
• Selected IBM UrbanCode Deploy as our application deployment
engine
• Help deliver the 1st phase of the biggest change program Hiscox
has ever undertaken
• Risky? Couldn’t deliver it any other way!
– 50 releases last week in 1 application alone
– 17.5 man days of effort reduced to about 10 minutes
– Help enable changing a 10 week change cycle down to 2 weeks
– We went from 1 person knowing how to do to do a release to
thousands (kind of!)
• Investigating proof of concept with IBM Rational Test
Virtualisation Server
15

17. Extreme sports deployments....
16

18. Continuous Delivery change approach
Dev
Version
control
(SVN)
1. Check in changes
Build
(Maven)
3. Build
Artefact
repository
(Artefactory)
4. Store artefacts
Regression
test
(Selenium)
8. Test
Performance
test
(JMeter)
9. Load test
SysTest
UAT
Production
10. Deploy
CI Test
servers
7. Deploy
CI
(Jenkins)2. Monitor for changes
Continuously automated On demand – click
button to deploy
Deployment
(uDeploy)
5. Instruct deployment
Server
config
(Puppet)
17

19. Convergence and divergence
18
Converge
N
Diverge
N+1
UrbanCode Deploy
• Move to the next
release (diverge
from current state)
Puppet
• Ensure that the
environment is at a
known state (converge
towards a known state)
Characteristics
• Lower frequency of
change
• Activities with little
reliance on being done
in a certain order
• Activities that can be
safely re-run
• More infrastructure-
centric
Characteristics
• Higher frequency of change
• Short lived configuration changes
(i.e. take this server out of load,
add it back in)
• Activities that are sequenced and
dependant on one another
• Activities that may rely on human
intervention
• More application-centric

20. Back to the demo
Eeeeek...

21. Convincing your boss
• Do a PoC – let people see stuff – a picture sells a thousand words
• Avoid lots of $$$ ROI calculations - management take these with a pinch of
salt
• Instead focus on time to market, avoided effort etc
• How are you going to do it otherwise?
• Multi-releases a day?
• Availability of resources?
• Cost of those resources?
• Geographic location?
• Morale
• Consistency
• etc
20

22. Thank You
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