Inside Softtone Power’s Journey to Level‑3 DevOps Certification

Overview

On April 26, 2022, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) announced the 17th batch of DevOps standard continuous delivery assessment results. Softtone Power Information Technology (Group) Co., Ltd. (referred to as “Softtone Power”) participated with its iPaaS technology platform project, which successfully passed the Level‑3 continuous delivery assessment.

Interview

Q: Please introduce yourself and the project you evaluated.

Liu Huaifu (CTO, Softtone Power) – Softtone Power is a leading Chinese software and IT service provider serving over 1,000 customers, including more than 200 Fortune 500 or China 500 enterprises. The evaluated project is the Softtone Power iPaaS platform, an enterprise‑grade PaaS that enables rapid development, construction, and customization of applications. It is built on a cloud‑native architecture with a comprehensive front‑ and back‑end framework, offering reusable components and services to accelerate business‑scenario development.

Q: How does it feel to achieve Level‑3 DevOps assessment?

Liu Huaifu: We are delighted that the iPaaS platform passed the CAICT DevOps maturity model Level‑3 assessment. This marks Softtone Power’s DevOps capabilities as a domestic leader and lays a foundation for further organization‑wide DevOps pipeline and capability building.

Q: Why did your company decide to join the DevOps standard assessment?

Liu Huaifu: Three factors drove the decision. First, many financial clients have adopted the DevOps standard, and DevOps capability must match their expectations. Second, cloud‑native technologies are essential for digital transformation, and solid DevOps practice is the key to leveraging them. Third, the assessment provides a systematic way to guide and elevate our engineering capabilities, and we have already built supporting tools and accumulated rich experience.

Q: What are the technical characteristics of the iPaaS platform and its design?

Liu Huaifu: The iPaaS platform uses low‑code technology to help developers quickly create new products. It adopts a mainstream micro‑service architecture and serves as a representative case for DevOps engineering practice. Participating in the assessment helps us apply DevOps to the most transformation‑critical project and creates a foundation for broader platform and standard promotion.

Q: What are the biggest gains from this year’s DevOps implementation, and what are your next steps?

Liu Huaifu: Over the past year, DevOps improvements have integrated platform tools, enhanced end‑to‑end continuous delivery, and refined process standards, resulting in observable, measurable, and improvable development efficiency and quality. Next, we will further promote the DevOps model across the organization, optimize the continuous delivery platform, and explore open‑sourcing our DevOps toolchain to support digital transformation in various industries.

Q: How has the DevOps assessment helped your enterprise and team?

Wang Yonghai (Deputy Director, Group Technology Research Institute) – The assessment fostered a DevOps culture aligned with our digital transformation strategy. It refined our CI/CD platform, automated testing tools, and established an enterprise‑level continuous delivery platform that increased release frequency from monthly to weekly and achieved a 100% production deployment success rate in the past three months.

Q: What metrics demonstrate the project’s improvement?

Wang Yonghai: After the assessment, the end‑to‑end delivery cycle shortened to within one day, release frequency rose to weekly, and automated test coverage and quality gates ensured 100% successful deployments.

Q: Was the assessment process smooth? What challenges did you face?

Wang Yonghai: As one of the few companies in the industry to undergo DevOps assessment, we lacked reference experiences and had to explore the process step by step. We addressed challenges through multiple training rounds, role adjustments, and iterative refinement of our pipeline, ultimately establishing a tailored DevOps approach.

DevOps Standard Model

The “Research and Development Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model” is a series of standards led by CAICT, co‑created with top internet, financial, and telecom companies. It is the first comprehensive DevOps series standard in China and has been adopted by many leading enterprises. The standard was finalized in July 2020 by the ITU‑T, becoming the world’s first international DevOps standard. The assessment framework covers agile development management, continuous delivery, technical operations, application design, security and risk management, and tooling.