How Infosys uses GitHub

Infosys brings DevSecOps best practices to the world with a little help from GitHub.

Key Results

20% Velocity Increase
20% Reduced Effort

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Play video: Leading AI and cloud computing innovation: Infosys' strategic use of GitHub

About Infosys

Location: Bangalore, India
Industry: IT Consulting
Active Users: 25,000

Infosys is one of the largest IT consulting companies in the world, with more than 200,000 employees working across practically every industry. The company helps organizations build and maintain technology while keeping up with the latest technologies and best engineering practices.

The Challenge

Each of Infosys' customers had a unique range of toolsets, making it challenging for the Infosys team to develop consistent processes to collaborate effectively while keeping security in mind. Infosys supports all the applications its customers use, including multiple source code management, CI/CD, and application lifecycle management systems.

The Solution

Infosys recommends GitHub Enterprise to their customers as a preferred collaboration tool, allowing internal teams to work together more effectively no matter where they are. The platform enables teams to save time by automating their processes while securing their code base with GitHub Advanced Security.

According to Naresh Choudhary, Vice President of Reuse and Tools, "As part of the best practices for DevSecOps, we recommend our DevSecOps platform, methods, and GitHub as a key part of this ecosystem. As our customers' processes mature, we expect to see more and more use of GitHub Enterprise."

Why Infosys Prefers GitHub

Developer Continuity

GitHub provides developers with familiarity and comfort. "GitHub is where engineers feel most comfortable because they already know the mechanics of it, they know the terminology," Naresh says. "That's especially true for younger engineers. People transitioning from school to the workplace already know how to use GitHub." This means far less time spent training new employees before they can be productive.

Remote Work Capability

Infosys: Mysore Campus

Employees can access code and other assets while working remotely or in client offices. "Our employees can be just as productive as they could be if they were sitting in the office," Naresh says. "Meanwhile, with GitHub Organizational Permissions we have the same level of control over our IP. We can still set access controls the same way we would in the office. It's the best of both worlds."

Process Automation

Process automation is a major factor in Infosys's use of GitHub. "When you tie automated tasks to pull requests, you don't need to remind people to do those things anymore," Naresh shared. "People don't like being nagged, so automation increases developer happiness." Modernizing processes also means less retraining of people, because the new process can be run automatically instead of relying on employees to follow checklists.

When you tie automated tasks to pull requests, you don't need to remind people to do those things anymore. People don't like being nagged, so automation increases developer happiness. Our own team has been able to go much faster.

The result is fewer process errors while developers spend more time focusing on creating value for customers. "Our own team has been able to go much faster," Naresh says. "Our velocity is 20% higher thanks to our Integrated Digital Infra with Infosys DevSecOps and GitHub playing a critical role."

Integration Capabilities

The ability to easily extend GitHub's functionality through integrations is another key advantage. Infosys uses a wide variety of tools, from Jira to Visual Studio, and benefits from having a centralized system that everything can tie into. Centralization also makes it easier to keep track of everything integrated with GitHub because actions are tied to pull requests. "The ability to track changes becomes critical from an audit trail perspective," Naresh says.

Security

Infosys: Aerial

Infosys is leveraging GitHub Advanced Security to secure code as part of the software development workflow. In addition to scanning their existing code base, Infosys uses pre-commit hooks to make sure that code with known security defects never makes it into a repo. "A lot of problems get nipped in the bud this way," Naresh says.

Collaboration and Code Reuse

GitHub is the easiest way for developers to share and discuss code. "It brings a level of visibility that helps everyone in the value chain do their best," Naresh says. This is particularly helpful for helping employees grow as developers. "When you see each other's work, you can learn from each other," he says. "You get motivated to improve your own work and innovate further."

Code reuse is a major goal for Infosys. Infosys Code Store, powered by GitHub in the back end, is made available for developers to collaborate on all Infosys built code components and tools, to facilitate easy access and download of reusable solutions. "With GitHub, our team is able to build applications with significantly reduced effort," Naresh says. "Most teams leveraging these assets save 20% of their effort, easily."

Looking Forward

Whether it's internal code use or working with the open-source community, Infosys uses GitHub to collaborate and share their expertise with customers and the world. "I don't think we can say we've implemented everything we want to yet," Naresh says. "And we probably never will because it's a continual journey of excellence as a live enterprise, we'll continue to challenge ourselves and keep evolving."