What is the role of GitOps in IT strategy? This talk gives an overview and puts GitOps into the context of current challenges in IT strategy. Main aspects are continuous delivery, policy as code, automated governance, compliant-by-default work environments, acceptable means of compliance and a comprehensive automation of all development and operations related processes with the goal of true hands-off operations. The result places GitOps as a major building block of any modern IT strategy. GitOps helps building essential key IT capabilities. It creates the motivation to truly “fix the basics” via sustainable solutions to enable creating higher level automation solutions. With GitOps engineers can focus much more on business value and spend less effort on boring IT topics.

1. Building the backbone of global trade,
to make shipping products as easy as sending emails.
Schlomo Schapiro, 20.07.2022, StackConf 2022
The Role of
GitOps in IT
Strategy v2

2. PLACEHOLDER FOR IMAGE/PHOTO
About Forto
● Freight Forwarder
● “Unicorn” startup in Berlin
● Team of ~800 around the world
● Own transportation management
system to run our business
● Everything in the cloud
● We are hiring!
2

3. 3
Source: OpenGitOps.dev
GitOps
1. The principle of
declarative desired state
A system managed by GitOps must have its Desired State expressed
declaratively as data in a format writable and readable by both
humans and machines.
2. The principle of
immutable desired
state versions
Desired State is stored in a way that supports versioning, immutability
of versions, and retains a complete version history.
3. The principle of
continuous state
reconciliation
Software agents continuously, and automatically, compare a system's
Actual State to its Desired State. If the actual and desired states differ
for any reason, automated actions to reconcile them are initiated.
4. The principle of
operations through
declaration
The only mechanism through which the system is intentionally
operated on is through these principles.

4. is the discipline that defines how IT will be
used to help businesses win in their chosen
business context.
Gartner
4
Source: https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/it-strategy
IT strategy

5. 5
Buzzwords have some truth in them:

6. 6
Business Goals
IT Strategy
Deployment Tools
IT Infrastructure
How is this
related?

7. 7
DevOps

8. 8
Happy DevOps Campers
Engineering
Teams
git
?
CI CD

9. … if every person uses the same tool for the same job
… codified knowledge - everybody contributes his part to common automation
… if all people have the same privileges in their tooling
… if human error is equally possible for Dev and Ops
… replacing people interfaces by automated decisions and processes
... a result
DevOps is
9
bit.ly/5devops

10. 10
The Problem

11. We want digitalisation,
our IT Strategy calls for …
● IT quota grows exponentially,
no problem can be solved without IT
● All IT processes are much more integrated and
networked, API first …
● Growth factor of IT much bigger than increase in IT
staff → IT “production efficiency” must increase
● More IT in business units → decentralisation of IT
skills (BizDevOps)
● Increasing IT compliance requirements
● Utilise public cloud offerings to drive innovation –
have viable cloud exit strategy
11

12. As an IT team we want …
● Deliver great product/service
● Focus on our product/service
● Use good tools & platforms
● Know which internal processes to deal with
● Reduce overhead with internal processes
● Comply with company policies without pains
● Know about relevant company policies
● Use standard solutions for common problems
● No dependencies to other teams
12

13. Solution Approach
13
Organisational Frameworks
Technology
Frameworks
Fix the
Basics
Acceptable Means
of Compliance
Policy
as Code
Budgets for
Compliance
Standardized
Tooling
Hands-Off
Operations

14. Acceptable Means
of Compliance
Standardized
Tooling
Fix the
Basics
Policy
as Code
Solution Approach
Goal: Hands-Off Operations
14
Organisational Frameworks
Technology
Frameworks
Budgets for
Compliance
Hands-Off
Operations

15. 15
Declarative
Descriptions

16. 16
git
?
CI CD
GitOps to the Rescue
WHAT HOW
Declarative
Descriptions
Deployment
Automation
Test for Compliance Test for Correctness
Product
Teams
Platform
Teams

17. 17
GitOps

18. 18
GitOps Tech
Engineering
Teams
git
?
CI CD

19. GitOps Tech
19
git push
State Repo
develop
Binary
Artifacts
CI
Test &
Build
State Repo
main
git push
Version 27
Merge
Request
Modify
Monitor
❶
❷ ❸
❹
❺
❺
GitOps
Controller
People Area Machine Area
Infrastructure
Environment
Systems
➏

20. 20
CI/CD
git push trigger deploy
1. CI Ops
Engineers
Git
Ops
git push trigger
deploy
delete
2. Simple GitOps
Engineers
Git
Ops
git push
monitor
git pull
deploy
delete
monitor
3. GitOps Controller
(git push)
Engineers
GitOps Controller

21. 21

22. GitOps & Compliance Automation
22
● GitOps Operations Model
provides ideal interface for
compliance automation:
A central place where
every change passes by in
a machine-readable format.
● GitOps enables true hands-off
operations, reducing IT costs
& efforts.
● Motivation to “Fix the Basics”.
Compliance
Checks

23. 23
IT Strategy

24. DevOps
Ops
Automation
IT Evolution Big Picture
24
Technology
Culture
Dev ⇔ Ops
CI-Ops
1
2
GitOps
Hands-Off
Operations

25. Hands-Off Operations
25
● No manual changes in production
● Dev & Ops have same permissions in
production: None by Default
● Automate the hard stuff:
○ Compliance & governance
○ Distributed rolling upgrades
○ Consistent Backup & Disaster Recovery
○ Everything in your stack
● Test Driven Everything
● Standardized Tooling
● Fix the Basics!
GitOps

26. Why GitOps?
26
Hands-Off
Operations
Impossible!
GitOps
Yes,please!
When do
we start?

27. The Role of GitOps in IT Strategy
27
Adopting GitOps practices drives
automation as the solution for
many IT strategy requirements.
● schlomo.schapiro.org/2021/04/the-gitops-journey.html read & watch more about this
● schlomo.schapiro.org/p/5-devops-principles.html my DevOps definition
● forto.com/career join our vision:
"We are building the backbone of global trade, to make shipping goods as easy as sending emails."
Q&A
@schlomoschapiro schlomo.schapiro.org