Last Updated on July 25, 2021 by Rakesh Gupta
In the midst of these highly sought after jobs, the Salesforce economy is booming and demand for Salesforce-skilled workers has never been higher. Recent research from IDC reveals that Salesforce and its ecosystem of partners will create 4.2 million new jobs and $1.2 trillion in new business revenues worldwide between 2019 and 2024.
I recently spoke to Sanjay Gidwani, Chief Operating Officer at Copado, about Salesforce DevOps and what Copado is doing to fill the DevOps skills gap.
Rakesh: First, so that my readers understand who you are, tell me about your background and an overview of Copado.
Sanjay: I was at Salesforce for many years before I joined Copado. I was managing customers in their Salesforce journey and running teams of architects that designed transformational enterprise apps for the force.com platform. DevOps was a core aspect of this journey. At Salesforce we worked first-hand with the types of customers we work with today at Copado. As a result, we are able to understand the huge opportunity for Salesforce DevOps. I was one of Copado’s first US hires and joined the team because I am passionate about helping customers take the power of Salesforce to the next level.
To give you an understanding of Copado, you should know some unique traits of the Salesforce platform. Salesforce is unique because it does not contain a source repository for developers and IT to store their work, nor is there a structured release process. When this happens, users can run into problems like override others’ work or write conflicting code, which leads to version control issues and ultimately wastes time and resources. Delivering releases is a complex issue and, if done inefficiently, it can be expensive. On top of all this, there isn’t a way to tie releases to a compliance process, which opens a can of worms in the privacy and security realm. Copado addresses all these needs for enterprises on the Salesforce platform. It is built 100% natively on the Salesforce platform and Copado enables faster, error-free releases with continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) technologies. Copado is fully integrated with Salesforce Clouds and DX.
Sanjay: DevOps is a movement that allows collaboration, whether that’s with admins and architects, or developers, or folks in the IT department, or other business planning units. DevOps is so critical to what we do because it allows all these players to quickly collaborate governance and come to gather and effectively manage development and innovation on the Salesforce platform.
There is no doubt that Salesforce is a versatile and dynamic platform but it is unique in various ways. Because of these characteristics, it has not been easy for professional developers to adapt their tools and techniques to work on this platform but there is a demand to deliver innovation velocity.
Rakesh: There is a lot of research showing the need for Salesforce DevOps. What should my readers know if they are interested in receiving training?
Sanjay: Our enablement program includes both online and live training options across multiple levels of Salesforce DevOps, beginning with the DevOps admin. Certification is open to all and available in the Copado Academy as part of the Copado Success Community. Virtually anyone can register and log in. You can take courses, anywhere from high-level DevOps, to drilling into how you can effectively manage your development pipelines. Just like TrailheaDX made training free, we offer the same type of program.
Through the community, you can gain access to specially designed training modules to help accelerate your adoption and elevate your DevOps skills. There’s different levels of certification programs. For example, those with Salesforce admin experience and Salesforce Application Lifecycle Experience can earn a DevOps Administrator certificate.
Copado’s Salesforce DevOps training session will help trainees learn the basics to install, setup and deploy Copado, including handling a project with multiple streamlines of work, implementing a Git branching strategy, how to keep sandboxes in sync, and releasing your first application.
We created this program because there is a real need. IDC reports that the Salesforce economy will create 548,400 new jobs and $67 billion in new business revenues in India between 2019 and 2024.
Based on this demand, Copado is opening its first Indian offices in Bangalore in 2020 to add additional development, support, and training for Indian and global customers.
Rakesh: If I want to attend a training, in India or elsewhere, where do I go?
Sanjay: In 2020, we are focused on training in key Salesforce cities — New Delhi, Jaipur, Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad — and plan to train 20,000 people worldwide. Check out more details here.
