DevOps Outsourcing Perks, Drawbacks, and Best Practices

So why should a company use DevOps outsourcing services? What are the difficulties and why in-house hiring still exists?

Main advantages of DevOps outsourcing are:

• Too many vendors
  There are too many IT companies providing outstaffing services. The rates vary from <$25->$250 per hour and the high price is not always the evidence of top quality, and vice versa - lower rates doesn't mean worser quality. For example, only in Ukraine you can find 60+ vendors providing cloud consulting services.

• Paperwork
  At first glance, papers and documents like SLA (Service Level Agreement), contracts, invoices etc. seem to be a headache, to put it mildly. And all these moves are undesired and create an impression of too much complexity. But all this stuff is very important for both sides. With SLA and contract you wouldn't worry about the performed work.
• Unfair vendor
  As it happens in any other sphere, you can stumble across the unfair vendor. Most commonly such vendors hide the fees or even overestimate the hours for tasks.
  Once a new client came to us with concerns on his ex vendor, the concern was doubts about the estimates provided. This ex vendor estimated more than 4 weeks x 40h and, by the way, for work of two engineers simultaneously, what multiplies the final bill by 2. In reality, this task occurred to be much easier and required less resources - the real estimate was 2 weeks x 40h and required only 1 engineer.
  This is a particular case and, luckily, more vendors are fair. But, better to trust and verify ;)
• An outsourced engineer or a team wouldn't become an essential part of your company
  Despite the need to build proper communication from the day one, you evidently understand that hired engineers of the DevOps outsourcing company wouldn't become a part of your culture.

Want to hit the target from the first effort? Here we are sharing our tips and best practices for successful vendor selection and partnership.

Establish clear expectations- what, why, when, how you want achieve your goals. If you don't know how you can achieve the goals and what can help you with it, you can just define soft and hard deadlines and approximate budget for implementation. The outsourcing company will make a proposal with solutions that will meet your requirements and business goals.

Check up your potential DevOps service provider for compatibility with your company. Here we mean your satisfaction with vendor's communication skills, time zone \ working hours, skill set, technologies, work style, rates etc.

Don't make your decision ruled only by budget. Lower rates don't mean worser quality and, vice versa, high rates don't imply super quality of execution. The most important is the expertise in the technologies you use and how the potential vendor will solve your pain points. Moreover, some vendors have great discounts and delayed payment opportunities!

Request references and portfolio. Examine thoroughly the previous experience and track record. You can also reach the contact persons in the reference list to learn more about the service provider and receive a feedback. You can also check clutch.co to read the feedbacks. This service provides advanced feedback collection via phone or a special online form. It is impossible to fake the feedbacks.

Decide which payment model best suits you. This table will help you choose the best solution. Almost all service providers have such pricing model: