As Kermit the Frog famously sang, “it’s not easy being green,” yet it’s critical for our planet’s survival that we figure it out.

Ironically, the very tech we’re using to help in that effort could be making things worse. A 2019 survey conducted by Informa revealed that while datacentres use 3 percent of the world’s electricity, energy efficiency was only number four on IT leaders’ priority lists when creating a new datacentre. Yet those datacentres run the artificial intelligence and machine learning being used to understand and combat greenhouse gas emissions.

The price of AI
A 2019 report from the University of Massachusetts found that training and tuning a deep neural network can create the equivalent CO2 emissions of those produced in anything from just over two years of an average American’s life to more than seventeen years’ worth (depending on the model). Another study, also from 2019, found that the computations needed for deep learning research increased by 300,000x (no, that is not a typo!) between 2012 and 2018.

Going green
In an effort to combat the runaway emissions, at the Microsoft BUILD virtual conference last week, Microsoft, Accenture, GitHub, and ThoughtWorks announced that they have teamed up as founding members of the Green Software Foundation, a non-profit organization with the mission of creating an ecosystem of people, standards, tools, and best practices for building green software. It is part of the Joint Development Foundation Projects, an affiliate of the Linux Foundation.

What is green software
So what is green software? Sajay Podder, technology sustainability innovation lead at
Accenture explained. “The term green software relates to the design, development and use of software, and is a term we use to help companies consider the carbon emissions related to software with the intent to keep emissions as low as possible. It is important because while digital technologies are key to protecting the environment, that proliferation is also resulting in software’s growing carbon footprint,” he said. “But we also realize that it’s a new field, requiring new skills, new standards, new training and new tooling.” He said that when he discovered that a team at Microsoft was also looking at the issues, they began discussions about a collaboration, and the Green Software Foundation was born.

It’s all about the community, added Jeff Sandquist, corporate vice president of developer relations at Microsoft. Developers want to build apps that consider their impact on the

climate, and no one company or individual can do it alone. “For that to happen, we need to understand how to build green software, and folks need tools, and they need the knowledge to become qualified wherever they are in the world, on a really important matter,” he said. “And so our goal with this is to really establish best practices, set up standards, really work together. We’ll work together to be able to make sure that we create a great community of green software practitioners.”

Erica Brescia, chief operating officer at GitHub, said that GitHub joined with the goal to make it easier for developers to use and contribute to the global climate solution by empowering them with the right visibility and the right tools, so they can create and maintain green software themselves.

For ThoughtWorks, said Elise Zelechowski, global head of diversity, equity and inclusion, sustainability and social

change, sustainability and climate change mitigation is a priority. “We believe that the tech sector has a really important role to play here in taking action on climate,” she said. “We’re increasingly seeing our clients coming to us for thought leadership tools and advice on this. And while there’s a desire to take action, it’s not always clear where to start for them. ThoughtWorks is very excited to be joining the foundation to help define these standards to help organizations adapt and implement new tools, and to work with government, academia, nonprofits, and all of you and build this community to shape the vision of the work.”

In the recent times, a new trend is gaining popularity in the software development life cycle called DevSecOps. This technology bridges the gap between development, operations, and security teams to speed up the software development process through collaboration and communication among the teams. The goal of DevOps is to give more ownership to the development team for developing and monitoring applications. Security plays a key role by providing high-end security to the applications.

“DevSecOps = DevOps + Security”

The rising adoption of various software applications among businesses and consumers has opened new avenues for hackers to hack data leading to the lack of security in terms of coding or configurations. DevSecOps is expected to play a vital role at this point in maintaining the security by collaborating various departments at the initial stages of product development.

Market Analysis:

According to Infoholic Research, the global DevSecOps market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 33.7% during the forecast period 2017-2023. The rising security breaches, awareness about DevSecOps platforms, need for improving SDLC by reducing the time wasted, and the increasing investment activities have led to the demand for DevSecOps. In addition, the growing demand for advanced technologies, such as AI, automation, and cloud technologies, are expected to support the DevSecOps market growth. The market is analyzed by regions, deployment type, and enterprise type.

Segmentation Analysis: Regions and Deployment type

Region-wise: The Americas leads the market followed by Europe. The US, Canada, UK, Germany, and France are the major revenue generators owing to the rising security breaches, advanced technology, demand for high-end software products, and government rules and regulations related to security. Asia Pacific is always an attractive market for the key stakeholders to enhance their business or product portfolios. Especially, India, China, Japan, Singapore, Philippines, and other country enterprises are showing interest in the DevSecOps platform. It shows that DevSecOps platform adoption rate is about to witness a lot of investment in the upcoming years. Finally, MEA is an emerging market for the key stakeholders during 2017-2023.

This report provides details about DevSecOps deployment type. Most of the DevSecOps players are offering cloud and on-premises deployment modes for their customers and most of the enterprises are still demanding for the on-premises model. In the recent years, the enterprises are moving from on-premises to the cloud, but cloud providers need to ensure security at each stage of the product development involving security, developers, and operational professionals. The cloud deployment model is expected to contribute the major market share followed by the on-premises model.

Enterprise type Analysis

Globally, all kinds of enterprises are falling under security breaches somehow, especially SMEs are always targeted by the hackers’ due to the lack of IT infrastructure and knowledge about security threats. Whereas, larger enterprises are adopting more and more digital, advanced technologies to reach their customer demands, but security loopholes on software product/services may impact their customer experience. Thus, enterprises are showing interest in adopting the DevSecOps platform and using it. The large enterprise segment is leading the market, followed by the SMEs, but in the future the SMEs segment is expected to increase its revenue contribution toward the market growth.

Key Vendors and Competitive Analysis

Some of the companies covered in the report include IBM, Splunk, Chef Software, Puppet, Amazon, CA Technologies, Qualys, and others. The small and growing start-ups are focusing to provide high-end DevSecOps tools and are receiving a good number of customers. The big players are enhancing partnerships and M&A strategies with the small players to increase their footprints in the market, and thus, gain a leading position in the DevSecOps platform market. Players are investing in building an expertise workforce in the DevSecOps area to satisfy the ongoing and future demands.

Benefits

The report provides an in-depth analysis of current and future market status for DevSecOps. The report aims to provide an opportunity for key players to understand the latest trends, demands, players’ initiatives, and technologies related to the market. This report gives the complete details about regions, country wise details, adoption and plan ratio of DevSecOps, revenue, and key trends. In addition, it helps the venture capitalists in understanding the profile of the companies.