This article is based on reporting originally published by Computer Weekly (computerweekly.com) in August 2018, drawing on IDC Asia-Pacific research, a Freeform Dynamics study, and case studies from Thai telco AIS and Southeast Asian super-app Grab.
DevOps Gains Momentum in Southeast Asia
Thai telco Advanced Info Service (AIS) used DevOps practices to build a mock-up for its Play mobile app in just 30 minutes, with the full app going from concept to delivery in 45 days. According to the original reporting, AIS estimated the project would have taken roughly twice as long without DevOps. It is a concrete illustration of why the region’s enterprises are paying close attention.
The drive to become more agile while simultaneously improving code quality is one of the primary motivators for DevOps adoption in Southeast Asia, according to Chris Zhang, research manager for software research at IDC Asia-Pacific.
IDC survey data cited in the original article indicated that more than two-thirds of ASEAN respondents had either already deployed, or were planning to embark on, continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) and DevOps initiatives in 2018. A separate IDC study valued the DevOps software market in ASEAN at $47.7 million in 2017, representing year-on-year growth of 18.9%, with projections of $131.1 million by 2022 at a compound annual growth rate of 29%.
Within ASEAN, Singapore was identified as the most mature market for DevOps practices. Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam were highlighted as markets with strong growth potential.
“Many organisations are reinventing themselves as providers of software and digital services, cognizant that DevOps will enable them to build, test and deploy applications at a faster pace and higher quality, than ever before.”
Manivannan Govindan, Director for DevOps in ASEAN, CA Technologies
Despite the promising headline numbers, IDC’s Zhang cautioned that only a small fraction of organisations have reached advanced levels of adoption, particularly among large enterprises — a gap between intention and maturity that defines the central challenge for the region.
Cultural and Legacy Challenges Remain the Biggest Blockers
DevOps is not a tool you install — it is an organisational philosophy. The human element is consistently the most challenging factor in successful DevOps adoption, according to Zhang. Organisations need to navigate change management, recruit the right talent, invest in education and reskilling, and secure executive and end-user buy-in before the benefits become tangible.
The Skills Gap Is Acute
A study by Freeform Dynamics found that more than two-thirds (77%) of business and IT leaders in Asia-Pacific reported it was very challenging to find professionals with DevOps experience. This skills shortage means most organisations cannot simply hire their way to DevOps maturity — they must invest in training and reskilling existing staff.
Legacy Architecture and Legacy Mindsets
Beyond skills, organisations face the dual burden of legacy technical infrastructure and legacy thinking. Monolithic systems are difficult to decompose into the independently deployable services that enable rapid CI/CD pipelines. Equally, hierarchical organisational cultures — common in large enterprises across the region — can resist the cross-functional collaboration and shared accountability that DevOps demands.
Security Cannot Be an Afterthought
Growing customer demands pressure organisations to release software on a near-continuous basis, which can crowd out security practices. Govindan identified this as a significant barrier: speed and security are frequently treated as competing priorities, when the DevSecOps model argues they should be integrated from the outset.
How Grab Puts DevOps Into Practice
Grab — the Southeast Asian platform that has expanded from ride-hailing into logistics, mobile payments, and food delivery — offers a practical case study in scaling DevOps across a fast-growing, complex organisation.
“Adopting a DevOps philosophy puts us in a good place to respond faster to our customers’ needs and build competitive advantage.”
Althaf Hameez, Engineering Lead, Grab
At Grab, operations teams build tooling and automation that developers can self-service. By empowering development teams to work independently, Grab significantly reduced the volume of cross-team communications required even for small tasks, increasing both pace and throughput. Because development teams own their services end-to-end, they have a direct incentive to ensure what they build performs reliably in production.
On the security side, Suchit Mishra, head of information security at Grab, described an “offence informing defence” strategy at a Splunk event in Singapore: Grab builds detective controls across its products, services, applications, and infrastructure to gather intelligence on where it is most vulnerable. Those insights are then used to strengthen defences in a way Mishra characterised as less intrusive and cheaper to implement than purely preventative approaches.
Grab’s remaining challenge is cultural alignment: developers accustomed to handing off operational concerns, and operations engineers used to controlling production environments, need to adapt to shared ownership. Hameez was direct about what makes this work: “Good training, documentation and management of expectations are key for this model to succeed.”
Accelerating DevOps Adoption: What Organisations Can Do
Practitioners and analysts consistently point to a common set of enablers for organisations looking to move DevOps from pilot to enterprise-wide practice.
1. Secure Leadership Commitment
Top-down support is critical, according to Mark Jones, IBM’s Asia-Pacific business leader for private cloud and hybrid cloud management. Executive sponsorship accelerates DevOps adoption across teams by driving effective change management and establishing clear role definitions. This finding is reinforced by the Freeform Dynamics study, in which Asia-Pacific organisations cited getting more management commitment as their top priority for improving software development outcomes.
2. Build a Culture That Rewards Collaboration
The Freeform Dynamics study found that 81% of Asia-Pacific respondents — and 86% of respondents in Singapore specifically — highlighted fostering an organisational culture that encourages and rewards collaboration as a key accelerator. Culture change is slow, but recognising and incentivising cross-functional teamwork is a practical place to start.
3. Start Small with Open-Source Tooling
For organisations with little or no prior DevOps experience, open-source technologies offer a low-barrier entry point for development and automation. Tools such as Git, Jenkins, Ansible, Terraform, and Kubernetes are widely used starting points. IDC’s Zhang argued that open-source adoption carries a cultural benefit beyond the technical one:
“This can help to build a collaborative DevOps culture where risk-taking and innovation based on the vision of an individual or small group can start quickly with a free download. Open source software adoption also helps change the organisational culture toward cross-group sharing, community-based innovation, and crowdsourcing.”
Chris Zhang, Research Manager, IDC Asia-Pacific
4. Treat DevOps as a Continuous Journey
DevOps deployments in ASEAN remain largely ad-hoc and opportunistic, often beginning with pilot projects aimed at rapidly launching digital services. The gap between controlled experimentation and organisation-wide DevOps transformation is wide, and crossing it requires sustained commitment.
“Organisations can never be finished completely with their DevOps journey, as the philosophy behind DevOps requires them to iteratively improve their practices.”
Mark Jones, Asia-Pacific Business Leader for Private Cloud and Hybrid Cloud Management, IBM
Key Takeaways
- DevOps adoption in ASEAN is real but uneven. Singapore leads in maturity; Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam are high-growth markets.
- Most organisations are still in early stages. Despite strong intent, advanced adoption remains limited to a small fraction of enterprises.
- The human problem is harder than the technical one. Skills gaps, cultural resistance, and change management consistently rank above tooling as the primary barriers.
- Security and speed are not mutually exclusive. The DevSecOps model — exemplified by Grab’s detective controls approach — integrates security into the delivery pipeline rather than bolting it on afterwards.
- Leadership buy-in is non-negotiable. Without executive commitment, DevOps initiatives stall at the team or department level.
- Open source lowers the barrier to entry and can help shift culture toward collaboration alongside providing the tooling foundations.
Original reporting by Computer Weekly. Market data from IDC Asia-Pacific and Freeform Dynamics, as cited in the original article.