How To Benefit From An Automated Deployment

Transcription

1 White Paper The Benefits of Deployment Automation

2 The Benefits of Deployment Automation Executive Summary Getting quality software into production quickly and efficiently is a major priority for organizations of all types. The speed of business today is often tied to product and service applications that differentiate and provide competitive advantage. For anyone responsible for the deployment of software, many converging factors (such as cloud deployments, Continuous Delivery initiatives, open source) are colliding that introduce complexity and add risk to the deployment process. Deployment automation is no longer a luxury and has become a de facto requirement for software companies who want to remain competitive in the current marketplace. Deployment automation streamlines the release process, making deployments systematic, predictable and repeatable. An automated deployment solution allows you to write your processes once, get them exactly the way you want, and then automatically run them and reuse the procedures every single time you deploy a new application or update across different environments. Why Deployment Automation? Deployment automation allows applications to be deployed across the various environments used in the development process as well as the final production environments. This results in more efficient, reliable, and predictable deployments. At the end of the day, solutions that automate your deployment processes improve the productivity of both the Dev and Ops teams and enable them and the business to develop faster, accomplish more, and ultimately build better software that is deployed more frequently and functions more reliably for the end-user. There are many benefits to automating your deployments, but these are the key things that you will achieve when you automate your deployments. Repeatablity With Fewer Errors Automated deployments are repeatable and much less error-prone. Once you have your app update ready to go, it can be easily deployed in the same process, without the possibility of someone accidentally typing the wrong thing when configuring a step. Benefits of Automated Deployments Repeatability: Every deployment deploys the same Fewer errors: Removing manual steps reduces errors Anyone can deploy: Eliminate bottlenecks by removing the need for experts to do the work Work on what matters: Spend time working on new features, not on busy-work of manual deployments Happier customers, more revenue: The ability to provide frequent updates with new features addresses customers needs sooner and keeps you competitive Lower costs: Fewer errors, fewer human hours needed for deployments means lower costs Anyone Can Deploy Automated deployments mean you can give anyone you desire the access to deploy software. Any stakeholder in the project will have the ability to push the launch button (with the right security or permissions mechanisms in place). You won t have to rely on just a handful of employees with intimate knowledge of the fundamental code of the update in order to execute a deployment. Developers and QA people, and in some cases even business owners, could easily push an update to their respective environments, rather than having to get in line and wait for Ops to update 2

3 their infrastructure and application, while not being able to move forward with their tasks in the meantime. Essentially, the knowledge of how to release your software is in the design not in the developer s brain that coded it. This is particularly important because with manual deployments, the ability to deploy an update is often in the hands of the one or two people who built it. If only they have the permissions necessary to execute a deployment, it can leave the company in a lurch if there is any kind of pressing need to take immediate action, such as fixing a bug in production or releasing more frequently to stay competitive in the market. Work On What Matters Another huge benefit to automated development is that engineers time is freed up to spend on actual, meaningful development, rather than scripting, doing manual deployments, or fixing failed processes, which should have been handled by an automated process. Performing a manual deployment is a time-consuming and labor-intensive process, so if you are relying on manual updates for your software, that means you have folks like your developers and testers spending their time deploying updates when they could be spending their time building the next big thing that will make your software better. More Updates, More Frequently with Lower Costs While automated deployments initially take a bit of work to set up, the long-term overhead is much less than manually deploying updates. This means you can release more software updates, more frequently. This is desirable for many reasons, some of which we ll go over later in this whitepaper. 3 Considerations when Implementing Deployment Automation Now that we ve taken a look at some of the benefits of deployment automation, let s talk about the 3 considerations when setting up an automated deployment. 1. Determine Dependencies: Take a look at the dependencies of your code and application. Dependencies are when the functionality of your application depends on something else. For example, your web server application uses a database hosted elsewhere. If the data in that database is changed or columns are deleted, the application s functionality will be impacted. You need to understand what depends on what, and where your changes might have an impact down the line. Start your project by creating a dependency map showing where the connections are between your different applications, databases, code, and related infrastructure. Then, when you look to model your release, you ll understand how each change might impact other processes. It can also be helpful to make sure your applications and services are backward-compatible, which makes handling dependencies easier because you avoid versioning issues. If versioning comes into play, you just created a dependency issue you could have otherwise avoided. 2. Governance and Compliance: What rules do you need to adhere to with your application? The rules of the game vary wildly depending on your company, your product, and your space. At a small startup with a team making a web app, there probably aren t too many rules to worry about in terms of which team member has access to what, or what audit tracking needs to be put in place. On the other end of the spectrum is software used by financial institutions or the military, where there are massive walls between environments and access to code and data that can t be crossed. Start by understanding the actual compliance and security requirements. Even the most seasoned developers and IT professionals often overlook this step and jump right to the tools setup without giving due diligence to answering the question, What do I really need here? Once you figure out the real requirements that are necessary for your specific application, you can map them out, then apply the tools. That way, you don t end up building any more governance and compliance systems (aka, doing more work) than is absolutely necessary. 3. Rollback Strategy: Once you ve made the decision to automate deployment, it s a good idea to think 3 The Benefits of Deployment Automation

4 about your rollback strategy: what you will do if something doesn t go exactly the way you anticipate. The truth is, at some point, something is bound to go wrong. While it s easy to copy over an old set of files, some changes are absolutely irrevocable. Once you drop a column in your database, there s no undropping it, so to speak. So start by being aware of changes you can and cannot roll back and make your plan from that point forward. How you address failed deployments or the need for fixing bugs in the software quickly is an area where frequent deployments are hugely beneficial. For one, the more often you are releasing updates, the higher the likelihood that the changes to the application between each release are small and more manageable. If something goes wrong, you can quickly identify where the error is coming from and correct it. If you are releasing massive, infrequent deployments, you ll have to wade through tons of code to figure out where the error is coming from. very real value to your software. Summary Deployment automation has many benefits. When automated, deployments can occur more quickly and frequently, with fewer errors, costing less, and requiring fewer manual steps. These are benefits that have direct business value such as faster time to market, increased revenue and profit, and higher customer satisfaction. To maximize these benefits, care must be taken when deployments are automated. Implementing automated deployment will make your development process faster and more user-friendly for all stakeholders from developers and QA to release engineers, database administrators, and IT operations and, ultimately, the end-users. This potentially means more downtime and a much worse user experience. Aside from this very real benefit, frequent deployment also shows your users that you are working to improve their experience and the product s functionality on an ongoing basis. It adds 4 The Benefits of Deployment Automation

5 About Electric Cloud Electric Cloud powers Continuous Delivery. We help mobile, embedded systems and enterprise web/it providers deliver better software faster by automating and accelerating build, test, and deployment processes at scale. Industry leaders like Qualcomm, SpaceX, Cisco, GE, Gap, and E*TRADE use Electric Cloud solutions and services to boost DevOps productivity and Agile throughput. For more information, visit electric-cloud.com.

6 Corporate Headquarters Electric Cloud, Inc. 35 S. Market St, Ste 100, San Jose, CA T: F: Electric Cloud Europe 1650 Arlington Business Park Theale, Reading Berkshire RG7 4SA United Kingdom T: +44 (0) Electric Cloud Japan KK 22F Shibuya Mark City West Dogenzaka, Shibuya-ku Tokyo Japan T: Electric Cloud, Inc. All rights reserved. Electric Cloud, Electric Make, ElectricAccelerator, ElectricCommander and ElectricInsight are trademarks of Electric Cloud, Inc. Microsoft and Visual Studio are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other names are used for identification purposes only and are trademarks of their respective companies. Microsoft, Visual Studio, and the Visual Studio Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.