In a software as a service (SaaS) infrastructure the service provider is responsible for the environments, and it has to respond to business needs faster than in an on-premises solution, pushing out enhancements and bug fixes to customers every day.
So the software company that decides to release and support SaaS solutions, in comparison to the one that supports only on-premises ones, can face a big challenge in directly managing the production environment.
For this reason, every SaaS provider should adopt continuous delivery. Continuous delivery is an emerging software development methodology that automates and improves software delivery. The objective of continuous delivery is to enable you to rapidly, reliably and repeatedly push out enhancements and bug fixes to customers without compromising on quality. So continuous delivery is a natural solution for managing a SaaS infrastructure.
As we developed our IBM Workload Automation on Cloud solution, we were also responsible for implementing the continuous delivery processes. The processes utilize IBM UrbanCode Deploy and allow us to upgrade our SaaS environments, ensuring high availability of the solution and continuity of service to our clients.
In this blog post we want to share the main ways that continuous delivery can be a key to success for your business.
Directly from the producer in minutes
Usually the chain between developer and client is full of intermediaries.
With software as a service delivery a lot of intermediaries are removed, and when we apply a continuous delivery solution, the path from developer to customer can be a straight way.
Your production environment can make use of each feature, fix and test performed by the developer team. The developers are focused on your environment.
Always in step with your business times
Do you need a new feature? In the on-premises world, at a minimum you need to wait several months or more for a new product release and then migrate your environment to the new version. Now with SaaS and continuous delivery a new feature can be available in just a few days. Just the time to develop and test it, and to automatically move the changes into your production environment, can happen in minutes.
Small steps to prevent serious falls
Are you worried because the software as a service provider might make a lot of changes in your production environment? Don’t worry, because continuous delivery can help here too. With continuous delivery, we make a lot of little changes because little changes prevent serious falls. Moreover, you can relax because before a new change is applied to your production environment, it passes thousands of automated tests.
Finally, the same change will be applied to all production environments, so most likely any problems will be resolved before you even perceive them.
Always ready with plan B
What happens if a new delivery causes a problem in your environment? A new process of continuous delivery starts, the changes are automatically rolled back and, since the developer promptly fixes the problem in the code, the fix is included in a new package that is automatically tested and delivered in your production environment in a short amount of time. Since high-availability is adopted by our continuous delivery solution, you should not be affected by the problem.
So, what do you think about continuous delivery on SaaS for workload automation? Whether you are convinced or not, we suggest you get the IBM Workload Automation on Cloud trial at no charge on the IBM Marketplace portal, and let us know about your experience with continuous delivery.
If you want to talk more about any concerns you might have adopting SaaS solutions, and in general about the Workload Automation (SaaS) offering, follow us on Twitter @GorgaIlaria and @p_reluigi, or leave a comment below. Thanks for your time!
This post was co-authored by Ilaria Gorga. Ilaria Gorga has worked as a software engineer in the IBM Tivoli Rome Lab since 2008. She has been on the Workload Automation Quality Assurance team since 2010 and focuses on implementing continuous delivery solutions. Ilaria has written several other articles (“Rational Quality Manager and Rational Team Concert adoption in Tivoli Rome Lab”, “Manage continuous delivery in the dynamic cloud environment using IBM UrbanCode Deploy”, “Managing a continuous delivery process by providing continuity of service”, “Managing remote repositories on a dynamic cloud network using IBM UrbanCode Deploy”).