A recent poll showed that more than 50% of companies are looking at implementing a continuous delivery (CD) initiative in 2014 - with fully 64% of them having executive-level visibility! What are the reasons so many enterprises think delivering on a continuous delivery strategy is so important?
(Source: Xebia Labs Survey Report )
Software “Eats the World”
As software is rapidly taking over the economy and transforming business, protected silos of development and the old way of doing things won’t work. In this new dynamic and agile reality, companies must move to a mindset that IT is not a “remote department” that gets to implement what the business needs in bursts, but instead an integral part of the business itself where development teams are operating in a constant feedback loop with customers.
Continuous delivery allows you to deliver new software (also meaning: deliver business value) and improve existing software faster, with lower risk. Reducing risk is important, but the processes that underpin continuous delivery translate into even more important values to the business:
- Accelerate time-to-value . The founder of a start-up doesn’t need an MBA to recognize that continuous delivery helps him/her get things done. A big business that has mapped out its value stream and has complex investments and obligations across a large organization will find that continuous delivery helps accelerate time-to-value.
- Data-driven decision making . Deploy, measure, adjust. You can still push large-scale releases, but your processes will be better suited to continuous data gathering. That will shorten the feedback loop with your customers. It sharpens your ability to respond, plan your next move and keep ahead of the competition.
- Quality . Behaving like you’re releasing continuously forces you to raise your quality bar and fully automate test practices. Better quality means happier customers, lower costs, fewer fire-drills and less unplanned work.
- Experimentation = innovation . Developers and lines of business are free to try new things cheaply, unlocking innovative ideas that have been penned-in behind long, high-investment release cycles.
- Reduce costs . Big releases have big costs and big consequences when things go wrong. Keeping deliverables in a release-ready state drives the cost of delivery downward.
Together, these values make continuous delivery a real game-changer for business. While adoption can begin and be proven at a team/project level, the nature of continuous delivery is that it crosses organizational boundaries in ways that require a real investment and top-down commitment. Choosing a continuous delivery toolchain that complements and coexists with your existing investments is a key step toward success.
CloudBees Continuous Delivery Platform
From its inception, the CloudBees vision has been to offer a self-service platform that covers the complete application lifecycle, from coding, building, testing, to staging and production, enabling businesses to continuously deliver business value.
Clearly, continuous delivery is getting increasing recognition from business, moving beyond the realm of developers and operations people. Because of our deep engagement with Jenkins and the investments we have made, CloudBees has had a front row seat as this continuous delivery awareness has grown. This has spurred us to formalize the CloudBees Continuous Delivery Platform and add new capabilities that bridge on-premise and cloud deployments seamlessly, so our customers can make use of their existing investments, wherever they are (public and private environments, as well as on-premise), whatever they are (IaaS, PaaS, traditional middleware, etc.), and take advantage of cloud economics. Stay tuned for even more great things as we help make the continuous delivery dream even more of a reality!
As you are progressing along your continuous delivery strategy, the CloudBees Continuous Delivery Platform can serve as its integration and orchestration hub, wherever you are working (private or public cloud, on-premise) and whatever your delivery tools and assets are.
Onward! Let's Go!
Early adopters have already proven the value of continuous delivery. Mainstream adopters have both observed its advantages and felt the competitive sting as their more nimble competitors outpace them.
Have you started your CD implementation strategy?
Onward,
Sacha
Sacha Labourey
CEO
CloudBees
cloudbees.com
Sacha Labourey is the former CTO of JBoss, Inc. He became co-general manager of the middleware division, after the acquisition of JBoss by Red Hat. He ultimately left Red Hat in April 2009 and founded CloudBees in April 2010. Follow Sacha on Twitter.