Operations teams have always been important in any organization that uses tech to do business. Thanks to DevOps (the best methodology we know to improve processes between developers and operations), we can see just how important they are when that business is tech.
Simply put, operations is a function as essential to software delivery as development. We all know software can't exist without developers. Unless it's a small project, software also can't run at all, or as long as it should, without those who set up, monitor, and maintain the environments it lives on.