Why Devops Needs Application Release Orchestration
The world is increasingly adopting computerization. Individuals and organizations depend on software and applications to create and market their products and services. However, there remains a significant gap between the creation and delivery of software from the source to the end-user. <!--more--> This is a challenge that has become a common issue for the DevOps team. DevOps' focus is to improve the production speed of new software and applications. Yet, the lack of efficient processes to facilitate their speedy delivery to the consumers creates an unsustainable lag.
There is also a need to link up DevOps with the market. Application release orchestration (ARO) is key in ensuring that the processes fulfill the end goal of reaching the final consumer in time.
A complete DevOps implementation needs release orchestration. Release orchestration automates repetitive manual tasks. This enhances reduced costs, improved software delivery, and greater development cycle transparency.
This article will discuss why Application Release Orchestration (ARO) matters, who it benefits, and top ARO tools. We will also discuss No-Code DevOps Orchestration and how it promotes delivery.
What is Application Release Orchestration (ARO)?
Application release orchestration coordinates complex releases across environments. It promotes better collaboration between operations and development.
Release orchestration simplifies and automates manual, repetitive tasks, which contributes to reduced costs. It reduces time-to-market and enhances greater transparency in the software development and delivery cycle.
Such an architecture allows developers to configure their pipeline and reporting to create a consistent and regular schedule for releases. ARO provides a single coherent interface instead of loose API integrations. The resultant interface is coherent and cuts through the different tracking methods and formats to get things done. Whatever the pipeline, release orchestration helps scale and deliver quality software faster.
Why ARO matters
Every organization wants its software and application packages delivered to the customers on time. Application release orchestration provides delivery efficiency. It combines the quick integration, testing, security, and software deployment stages to ensure that the application release process occurs smoothly and fast.
Some of the benefits of using AROs in DevOps are discussed below.
Automating processes
The most significant benefit you can reap from application release orchestration is automation. Because of the ARO, many of the services that previously had to be performed manually now require a few automatic steps to initiate them. ARO facilitates this both on cloud and premise. This feature reduces the workforce and time consumption previously incurred to perform the same tasks.
Increasing software and application delivery efficiency
ARO reduces the time required to move products to the final consumer while ensuring that the developmental stages occur smoothly and quicker. With this, operations become more convenient, and organizations can increase innovative practices and engage in quality control.
Enhancing transparency
ARO monitors every stage of a product's life cycle. This places you in an excellent position to assess the development and deployment process. You can identify any concerns raised at any level before releasing the product to the customers. What ARO does is that it acts as the central control for the entire development process of a given software. It gives you the mandate to overlook its progress and update the stakeholders. Transparency enhances communication between the development teams and the management, ultimately ensuring better productivity outcomes.
Providing market linkages
Your objective during the deployment stage is to ensure that the software or application reaches the final consumer quickly. Application release orchestration provides you with precisely that through automation. It eliminates the time that could have been wasted between the different stages of the product life cycle by facilitating a smooth transitioning. The software reaches the end-user faster. This gives room for rapid feedback that could be fed back into the continuous development processes of the software.
Who does application release orchestration benefit?
Release coordinators are some of the primary beneficiaries of ARO. Suppose you are a release coordinator or manager in your firm. In that case, your main goal is to ensure that the available delivery teams handle the software and applications coming from the development teams quickly. ARO enables you to put many tasks within your visibility - from the development stages to the deployment levels. This promotes smooth product releases and eases communication between the development teams, delivery teams, and customers more effectively.
If you are a member of the development and quality assurance teams, be it the product owner, project manager, software engineer, developer, or tester, you require ARO to make your work easier. Release orchestration platforms enhance the tracking of the software life cycle and ensure that the development teams work within a predictable and manageable schedule.
When working with development teams, sometimes you are forced to reschedule product releases. Yet, such could have been avoided if you did not underestimate the length of the release. AROs provide a high level of transparency that enables the development teams to determine the accurate period that each stage of product creation will take. This ensures that the communication made to the release management is more precise for logistics and market planning.
Most managers in IT firms encounter the challenge of lacking the idea of what is happening and each level of productivity of their teams. Using ARO helps you monitor your team performance by assessing the transition through the various production stages from planning and development to delivery and release. ARO puts IT management in a better position to push for quality performances in their departments.
Why no-code DevOps orchestration is vital for app delivery
For a long time, cloud application deployments required individuals to master specialized programming code utilized by highly trained software developers. But today, you do not need to go through that route. No-code DevOps orchestration has features that enable you to create your own customized applications. You do not need to rely on the skills of technical staff anymore because
No-code DevOps orchestration enables you to create and deploy applications using a drag-and-drop interface. Suppose you are an individual running an IT organization. In that case, you will be less concerned when a team member leaves for vacation because the rest of the staff can fill up the position quickly. This is because no-code DevOps orchestration is less complex than programming code.
Adopting no-code saves on time consumed writing code. That time is directed to building data pipelines. The tools and pipelines are deployed within a short time ranging from minutes to a few months for applications that would, otherwise, take more extended periods to be released. You need no-code DevOps orchestration if you are aiming to create a time lag for your IT product delivery system.
Top ARO tools
When choosing the appropriate Application Release Orchestration platform, you have to identify software that can make comprehensive application release pipelines, enable users to schedule, track, plan, and implement the elements of continuous integration and delivery workflows. Some of the best ARO Tools Are as follows.
GitHub
GitHub is a web-based interface that allows multiple people to collaborate in real-time to build and edit software. GitHub grants you access to a large community of software developers and allows you to modify permissions to different collaborators. It has space limitations - it limits the repositories to 1 gigabyte for the free version.
GitLab
GitLab is an open-source DevOps platform that provides continuous integration and deployment data pipeline features. It allows self-hosting on any plan. However, it has a relatively slower interface than its competitors, and repositories may experience bugs.
CloudBees CD
CloudBees CD is an ARO tool and a DevOps platform that makes the software release process less cumbersome. It provides deployment automation, release orchestration and lets you track and modify your software delivery pipeline. It is easy to install and comes at no cost. However, its user interface is less user-friendly.
Azure Pipelines
Azure pipelines deployment with data pipelines so that less time is spent creating software features and more in incorporating innovation. It has a simple layout that makes it easy to navigate. But it lacks a streamlined setup of continuous integration and continuous delivery.
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform provides a simple way of automating applications. It is flexible with resources and supports automation provisioning for cloud providers. However, Ansible usually struggles with complex and extensive inventories.
Codefresh
Codefresh is an advanced ARO tool that promotes continuous delivery for cloud-native platforms. It automates advanced deployments, such as Canary and Blue/Green, and can support any end-to-end pipeline. The documentation for this ARO is excellent, but it often suffers from instability issues.
AWS Amplify
AWS Amplify facilitates the creation and configuration of scalable mobile applications. It provides a simple framework to easily integrate your back end with your iOs, Android, and Web. It faces the limitation of lacking a straightforward way to add typescript support for the lambda functions.
Conclusion
DevOps enhances a faster creation of software and apps, while application release orchestration promotes the release and delivery of these products to the market. Combining DevOps and AROs is necessary to increase automation, transparency, and better communication in your product's life cycle.
Release orchestration ensures delivery pipelines are implemented based on templates. That gives an assurance that there is a consistent, repeatable, and foolproof process for running releases. Furthermore, it allows the modeling of application development and release processes as a customized sequence of steps and phases based on an organization’s needs.
Further reading
- DevOps and Continuous Delivery at the Edge
- DevOps and Current CDN Providers
- What it Takes to be a DevOps Engineer
Peer Review Contributions by: Onesmus Mbaabu
