NoOps
Also called: no-ops, fully managed platform
An arrangement where developers ship code and someone else owns everything between the commit and the customer — including the 24x7 pager.
Your developers push code. Everything between that commit and the customer — pipelines, infrastructure, scaling, patching, monitoring, incident response — is owned by someone else.
What it does not mean
That operations stopped existing. Anyone claiming that is selling you something. The work is identical; the difference is who does it and who gets woken up.
When it makes sense
Teams of roughly ten to a hundred engineers who need production reliability but cannot justify or cannot hire a platform and SRE function. Two good platform engineers cost more than a managed retainer and still give you no coverage at 3am on a Sunday.
The question to ask a provider
What happens if you want to leave. If the infrastructure only works while the provider holds the credentials, or if it is not defined as code in your own repository, it is not a managed service — it is a dependency. Exit assistance should be contractual rather than a negotiation.
See NoOps as we deliver it for what a specific scope looks like.