What DevOps and NetDevOps Mean for Network Engineers

NetDevOps, derived from the principles of DevOps, aims to apply a collaborative, cross-team mindset and a continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) workflow to network operations, supporting versioning and automated testing of network changes. While DevOps successfully integrates development and operations teams in software development, applying its principles to networking poses challenges, as network engineers often perceive DevOps as software-centric and struggle with cross-team collaboration. Despite efforts to promote NetDevOps in the late 2010s, the term has not gained significant traction, partly due to its association with software development. Network engineers remain divided on whether NetDevOps is synonymous with network automation or represents a broader concept, with some viewing it as a method for integrating network automation into application development to enhance service delivery speed.