Our approach to software development has changed in the last few years. IT professionals and software developers are working more closely together than ever before. The DevOps trend also extends to an acknowledgement that automation is a key factor in reducing costs and increasing release speeds.

Striving to be cost effective is a constant for any business but the increased focus on speed of deployment is a product of the growth of the Cloud and Agile development methodology. The bottom line is – the faster new features, fixes and improvements reach the customer, the greater their satisfaction. The same principle applies in an enterprise environment – the faster the latest version of an application reaches users, the more productive they can be.

Both environments require scalability. As your product offerings grow and branch out, the delivery method must be capable of handling the changes. In the enterprise environment a large portfolio of software applications is the norm and any deployment solution must be able to scale.

Automated app deployment can reduce costs, increase speed and scale as needed, but before we take a look at the solution let’s discuss the problem.

App Deployment Nightmares

There are a lot of potential problems in deploying applications manually. Not least of which is the time it can consume for developers and IT support. Configuration is the first challenge. Where is the application stored? Which version should be installed? Where should it be installed? Where is the configuration file and how is it applied?

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As the interface between Development and Operations, Application Release Management¹ handles information that is highly relevant to your Release and Operations teams. Selecting an Application Release Automation solution that provides insight and analytics from both perspectives is thus a key component of an effective DevOps strategy.

Here, we explain how Deployit‘s Infrastructure and new Release Overview features help you achieve this goal.
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As the interface between Development and Operations, Application Release Management¹ handles information that is highly relevant to your Release and Operations teams. Selecting an Application Release Automation solution that provides insight and analytics from both perspectives is thus a key component of an effective DevOps strategy.

Here, we explain how Deployit‘s Infrastructure and new Release Overview features help you achieve this goal.
 Read more

Earlier this year, I was invited to present a talk at Devopsdays Boston about deployment as the new build: how deployments are carried out now, how they will need to adapt in a more virtualized, on-demand application landscape and what fundamental improvements will need to come before deployment matures into the invisible, it just works™ experience build is today.

In the previous post, we looked at how Reusable commands, Models and Conventions++ helped turn build from a “black box” process into the “just works” experience we know today.

We then shifted back to deployment and identified Develop a common model, (Re)discover vanilla and Support a “clean build” as three key steps required to achieve a similar transition.
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Earlier this year, I was invited to present a talk at Devopsdays Boston about deployment as the new build: how deployments are carried out now, how they will need to adapt in a more virtualized, on-demand application landscape and what fundamental improvements will need to come before deployment matures into the invisible, it just works™ experience build is today.

In the previous post, we compared deployment to another key process in the application lifecycle – build – and asked which key developments turned it from a magical “black box” into the “just works” process it is today.

We identified Reusable commands, Models and Conventions++ as three key steps, which we’ll look into in more detail in this post. Then, we’ll shift back to deployment and ask which improvements will be essential to getting to “just works” here.
 Read more

Earlier this year, I was invited to present a talk at Devopsdays Boston about deployment as the new build: how deployments are carried out now, how they will need to adapt in a more virtualized, on-demand application landscape and what fundamental improvements will need to come before deployment matures into the invisible, it just works™ experience build is today.

In the previous post, we compared deployment to another key process in the application lifecycle – build – and asked which key developments turned it from a magical “black box” into the “just works” process it is today.

We identified Reusable commands, Models and Conventions++ as three key steps, which we’ll look into in more detail in this post. Then, we’ll shift back to deployment and ask which improvements will be essential to getting to “just works” here.
 Read more

Earlier this year, I was invited to present a talk at Devopsdays Boston about deployment as the new build: how deployments are carried out now, how they will need to adapt in a more virtualized, on-demand application landscape and what fundamental improvements will need to come before deployment matures into the invisible, it just works™ experience build is today.

In this first post, we’ll focus on some of the changes and trends across the industry that have brought such increased business attention to the area of release, deployment and management of applications.
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A couple of weeks ago, my ever-active colleagues Marco Mulder and Serge Beaumont organised an nlscrum meetup about “Combining Scrum and Operations”, with presentations by Jeroen Bekaert and devopsdays organiser Patrick Debois.

Unfortunately, I was late and only managed to catch the tail end of Patrick’s well-delivered talk explaining how Dev/ops can become Devops. Thankfully, the lively open space discussions that followed provided plenty of interesting insights, comments and general food for thought.

One recurring theme that particularly struck me was the comment, uttered with regret by many in Operations, that they would very much like to help and coordinate with the development teams but inevitably were always too busy keeping the production environment up and running.
In other words, helping prepare for new releases might be desirable, but achieving the five nines, or whatever SLA Operations has committed to¹, will always be paramount.

This is a fallacy! Indeed, one of the core realisations of the “Devops mindset”, to me, is that 99.999…% uptime is not an end in itself, but a means to an end: delivering the greatest business value possible. And aiming for the highest possible availability may not be the best way to go about it!²

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