I'm part of a large Managed Service Provider (MSP) that primarily delivers managed IT services with a focus on Azure. While we have both delivery and operations teams, most of our work is done through click operations. A few of our team members are experimenting with Terraform, but there's not much interest from the rest, especially within our operations teams, who mainly consist of sysops engineers with limited cloud experience. We've shown that we could standardize deployments and improve delivery speed, particularly for our landing zones, but once projects are handed over to operations, they revert to using click ops, neglecting the code we developed. I'm curious if anyone else has faced this challenge and what strategies or experiences they might share to help us embrace Infrastructure as Code (IaC) more effectively.
4 Answers
Honestly, it might be time to consider a different job if the company culture is resistant to change. If the leadership doesn’t push for modernization, you could be stuck in a rut for a long time.
Transitioning from click operations to IaC takes time and patience, especially when you're up against a bigger, established team that prefers traditional methods. See if you can run pilot projects that demonstrate the value of IaC. Highlight the efficiencies and cost savings—they might change their minds if they see the benefits firsthand.
It sounds like you're in a tough spot. If there's no willingness to change from the ops team, moving to IaC might be an uphill battle. Without a clear motivation or leadership support, it’s difficult to drive change. Sometimes, the best move for your career could be to look for a work environment that values innovation more.
Could you share a bit more about your current Terraform setup? It would help to know if you’re using complex modules or just raw resources. Also, is your CI/CD pipeline set up properly or are you running Terraform commands manually? Maybe you can find out why the ops team is reluctant to adopt Terraform—it might be some fear of the unknown or lack of training.
Right now, we have a basic Azure DevOps setup with some pipelines for validation and to execute plans and applies. We're learning as we go and using both Terraform and Bicep. The delivery team is excited about IaC, but most of the ops—which is a much larger team—aren't interested in upskilling. We mainly handle tasks like AVD, Citrix, and SQL, and I'm wondering if we're just behind the curve compared to other MSPs.
I can relate to that; it can be frustrating! It seems like you’re already doing some good things with IaC in delivery. It might just take some time and the right approach to get ops on board.
I totally agree with you. I’ve been in similar positions before. If there's no significant incentive to shift, you could end up wasting a lot of energy. Unless there's a strong revenue driver, changes often fizzle out.