Last month, Microsoft announced the rebranding of Visual Studio Team Services. This cloud development product is now called Azure DevOps. The new name has been met with mixed feelings. Some believe it indicates that DevOps can be bought. This is, and has always been, far from accurate. Microsoft defines DevOps as “the union of people, process, and products to enable continuous delivery of value to our end users.” Azure DevOps is merely a product to help enable DevOps, just as it was prior to the name change.
New Navigation
Azure DevOps is more than just a name change. The navigation has also changed to enable a more modular experience. The five pillars of Azure DevOps are Azure Boards, Azure Pipelines, Azure Repos, Azure Test Plans, and Azure Artifacts. With these pillars, it is now even easier to use individual pieces of Azure DevOps. If you prefer things to look how they did before, Azure DevOps allows you to disable the new navigation by simply clicking on your avatar in the upper right-hand corner and selecting Preview Features. There, you’ll be able to toggle various features on and off at your discretion.
The Pillars
The five pillars of Azure DevOps are parts of a whole DevOps workflow. Azure Boards houses Agile planning tools such as Kanban boards and interactive backlogs. Azure Pipelines is the Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery portion of Azure DevOps. This is where you’ll build, test, and deploy using any language and targeting any platform. Azure Repos is where you’ll find unlimited, free, private Git repositories. Azure Test Plans enables manual and exploratory testing. Azure Artifacts is a universal package repository. While these pillars work well together, they are also designed to be used separately. Furthermore, Azure DevOps is extensible. This allows you to take advantage of the hundreds of extensions available in the Marketplace today.
The name may have changed, but the power remains the same. With Azure DevOps, it is even easier to succeed in a fast-paced, changing environment.