It stands to reason that, the faster an application release or update moves through the stages for release, the more money a company can make. So why not adopt the concept of a production line for deploying applications? It worked for the auto industry! But what exactly does that mean for an application release and for everyone involved?

According to the Collins English Dictionary, a production line is a factory system in which parts of components of the end product are transported by a conveyor through a number of different sites at each of which a manual or machine operation is performed on them without interrupting the flow of production.

Applying this concept is simple. All you need is an application release automation tool such as Nolio ASAP. Automation is what creates the application production line, pushing along a product through each station and preventing delays.

With a manual deployment, an application has to go through the various departments and inevitably gets stuck for extended periods of time. Because each team is only focused on their one purpose, they aren’t paying attention to how their actions will affect previous or future tasks. In addition, as a result of manual work, the chance of introducing errors increases ten-fold. The application production line streamlines the release process eliminating ineffective manual developments and ensuring predictability.

Click here to learn more about Nolio’s Application Release Automation Platform

Click here to download the White Paper ‘Application Release Automation with Zero Touch Deployment’

Click here to read ‘Application Deployment 101’

Hundreds of IT Specialists joined us from all over the world to discover the potential of embedding the extensive capabilities of deployment automation into the TFS environment. Led by Nolio’s Product Director Ron Gidron, participants learned how Nolio’s plug-in can reduce errors, lower costs, increase operational throughput and accelerate time-to-market of application releases.

In his presentation, Ron systematically demonstrated how the successful integration of an automated solution in TFS can facilitate:

• Rapid and accurate continuous deployments
• The automation of selective/ad-hoc deployments (such as hot fixes and patches)
• Traceability and visibility
• A comprehensive release repository

Throughout the presentation, Ron demonstrated a fully automated deployment process in TFS and answered some wonderful questions in the Q&A session.

“TFS is a great resource for teams that need to coordinate their work in order to efficiently develop integrated software solutions. However, it does not provide the means to automatically perform extremely complex application releases. In the webinar, I demonstrated what IT operations teams can do in order to achieve fully automated releases in the TFS environment.” – Ron Gidron, Nolio Product Director

You can view the full webinar online by clicking this link.

Do you feel like not all of your questions were answered? It’s not too late to ask your application deployment questions to Ron or one of our other deployment experts.  Simply e-mail Nili at nili@noliosoft.com and I will make sure that all of your questions are answered.

Click here to view the presentation online

Click here to learn more about automating complex deployments in Microsoft TFS 2010

Click here to download our white paper ‘Application Release Automation with Zero Touch Deployment™

In our latest white paper, Nolio’s Product Director Ron Gidron details the challenges of continuous deployment, the importance of traceability and the benefits of implementing Zero Touch Deployment™ in Hudson CI.

With today’s complex applications, standard continuous integration ‘build and test’ models are no longer sufficient to guarantee that the software will be fully operational. The application must be deployed into an environment; however this is often extremely complex and requires multi-tier and multi-platform synchronization. Hudson CI, although a useful tool, falls short in this department.  In such complex environments, it is imperative to have the tools that can track the locations of all build versions so that, in the instance of an error, the source can be quickly located and rectified.

In this white paper, read about how you can:

1. Enable Zero Touch Deployment™ in Hudson for any environment (i.e. QA, pre-production and production)
2. Ensure complete traceability from every deployment back to Hudson (including details such as dates, promotions, comments and bugs)
3. Deploy every single build for smoke/sanity testing

By adopting Hudson’s Continuous Integration environment and pairing it with Nolio’s ability to automate application releases, it is possible to eliminate the reliance on engineers to manually perform processes, enabling them to focus on their daily tasks. Additionally, it dramatically reduces deployment times and eradicates errors. Automating deployment processes improves quality, reduces downtime and ensures visibility and traceability across all application environments.

Click here to download the Hudson CI White Paper

Click here to view the Hudson CI Webinar

Click here to view our resource library

This seminar will be led by Nolio’s Product Director Ron Gidron, who will explore the potential of embedding the extensive capabilities of deployment automation in this environment. In a live demonstration, he will show how Zero Touch Deployment™ can be achieved in TFS 2010 in order to reduce errors, lower costs, increase operational throughput and accelerate time-to-market of application releases.

View a sneak preview of this fascinating event! We’ve put some highlights of this event online so you can get an idea what to expect. While you’re at it, start thinking now about questions you want to ask our expert!

“The successful integration of an automated solution will facilitate rapid and accurate continuous releases, automated selective deployments, increased traceability and a comprehensive release repository.”
Ron Gidron, Product Director at Nolio

There is still time for you to learn about these cutting-edge technologies and pose all your application deployment questions to our expert in a dedicated Q & A session. Don’t miss this wonderful opportunity and register today!

The webinar will start at 10am GMT on Wednesday the 25^th of January.

Are you also a BizTalk user? Don’t miss out on ‘Zero Touch BizTalk Deployment’ happening on Tuesday, January 24 at 11am EST/4pm GMT.

Click here to register for TFS

Click here to register for BizTalk

Click here to download the TFS White Paper

About the Presenter

Ron Gidron has over a decade of experience in enterprise application management. He is the Product Director at Nolio and an expert in release deployment automation, with an extensive background in enterprise application monitoring, performance tuning and testing. Ron has worked as a consultant for Global 500 enterprises across all industry verticals.

We took a closer look at an online retailer who has recently adopted Nolio’s Zero Touch Deployment™ processes. This company employs a BigIP cluster in every one of its datacenters. In order to deploy applications to its live environment without downtime, the operator has to follow two simple steps from within Nolio’s Zero Touch Deployment™ process.

1. Query each one of the BigIP nodes for its failover state
2. Remove members from their BigIP pools selectively before upgrading the application components

As this is happening, the remaining servers in the pool continue to respond to server requests. Our new actions for virtual server failover state query and pool member management make it possible for the company’s IT operations and DevOps teams to deploy applications without any downtime!

In short, Nolio’s Zero Touch Deployment™ processes offer extended support for BigIP configuration and management. The new functionality covers getting, adding and deleting pool members as well as updating, creating and deleting iRules and querying virtual servers for their failover state.

Our latest out-of-the-box actions allow customers to include the traffic and access management capabilities of their F5 products directly into their Zero Touch Deployment™ processes, reducing manual efforts and increasing the quality and speed of the overall application release process.

Click here to learn more about Nolio’s Load Balancing Solutions

Click here to learn more about Zero Touch Deployment

Click here to view the Nolio Resource Library

Join hundreds of colleagues as Nolio’s Product Director Ron Gidron demonstrates how to solve the logistical nightmare that is BizTalk application deployments. He will explain how using the Zero Touch Deployment™ platform can dramatically improve your application releases across multiple servers aided by Nolio’s out-of-the-box actions for BizTalk.

Want more details before you sign up? Check out our exclusive online preview covering the agenda, platform and benefits of deploying applications with Nolio’s Zero Touch Deployment™.

“Our platform is fast, reliable, reusable and completely manageable. Using it will save you the time and headache caused by deploying BizTalk applications!” – Ron Gidron, Nolio Product Director

Attend this webinar and learn how you can fully automate complex deployments for your Microsoft BizTalk applications. Mr. Gidron will explain how you can achieve full control of you BizTalk applications, host instances, orchestrations and bindings as well as reduce your dependency on command line and complex manual deployments.

During this seminar, you will learn how to:

1. Achieve full control of BizTalk applications, host instances, orchestrations and bindings
2. Fully automate all aspects of BizTalk applications deployment and configuration
3. Create reusable deployment processes across multiple BizTalk versions
4. Reduce your dependency on command line and complex manual deployments of BizTalk applications.

In addition to the presentation and demo, Mr. Gidron will be available for dedicated Question and Answer session at the webinar’s conclusion.

This event will take place on Tuesday, January 24^th, 2012 at 11amEST/4pm GMT. Don’t miss this amazing opportunity and register today!

We will also be hosting a webinar, ‘Achieving Zero Touch Deployment™ in a Microsoft TFS Environment’ on Wednesday, January 25th, 2012 at 10am GMT. Click here to learn more and register now.

Click here to register for ‘Zero Touch BizTalk Deployments’.

Click here to view the exclusive online preview.

Click here to register for ‘Achieving Zero Touch Deployment™ in a Microsoft TFS Environment.

In a recent Gartner report, analyst Ronni J. Colville answers this question and more!

Today, formal processes between developers and production engineers are few and far between. This lack of an established system as well as limited communications in many of today’s organizations is specifically targeted as barriers to a successful DevOps practice.

The problems in communication are often due to the deployment processes. When the developers finish a code, they place it in a repository. The operation team picks it up and runs preproduction testing to confirm that updates and enhancements are in sync with existing development environments, which they rarely are. Communication along the application production line is extremely limited. Achieving clear and effective communication between developers, QA and operations is a near miracle.

Application release automation solutions can resolve these issues by allowing complete visibility so that everyone can see what is happening in the various stages of application deployment, allowing the process to be streamlined. Tools such as Nolio ASAP provide a graphical interface and can automate alerts so that stakeholders know exactly where an application stands in the release process as well as what needs to be done next and by whom.  In addition, visibility requires the establishment of a model of the application and its configuration for each environment. For optimal visibility, however, we need more than just a transparent process. A major benefit of application release automation tools is that they provide a means to create application models in various environments with externalized and variable configuration settings.

Click here to find out more about Nolio’s ARA tools

Click here to read the full Gartner report

Click here to learn more about Gartner analyst Ronni J. Colville

In our latest webinar, ‘Zero Touch BizTalk Deployments’, Nolio’s Product Director Ron Gidron will show how you can fully automate complex deployments for your Microsoft BizTalk applications! He will demonstrate how the successful realization of fully automated application releases can reduce errors, lower costs, increase operational throughput and accelerate time-to-market!

Mr. Gidron will explain how you can:

1. Achieve full control of BizTalk applications, host instances, orchestrations and bindings
2. Fully automate all aspects of applications deployment and configuration
3. Create reusable deployment processes across multiple BizTalk versions
4. Reduce your dependency on command line and complex manual deployments of BizTalk applications.

“Using Nolio’s Zero Touch Deployment™ platform can dramatically improve application deployments. We have a number of out-of-the-box actions that can seamlessly run across multiple servers regardless of version.  Our platform for Zero Touch Deployment™ is fast, reliable, reusable and completely manageable. It will save everyone the time and headache caused by deploying BizTalk applications!” – Ron Gidron, Nolio Product Director

Following the presentation, all participants will have the opportunity to participate in a question & answer session with Mr. Gidron.

This webinar will be held on Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 at 11am EST/4pm GMT.  Click here to register today.

We will also be hosting a webinar, ‘Achieving Zero Touch Deployment™ in a Microsoft TFS Environment’ on Wednesday, January 25^th, 2012 at 10am GMT. Click here to learn more and register now.

Click here to learn more about Zero Touch Deployment.

About Ron Gidron

Ron has over a decade of experience in enterprise application management. He is the Product Director at Nolio and an expert in release deployment automation, with an extensive background in enterprise application monitoring, performance tuning and testing. Ron has worked as a consultant for Global 500 enterprises across all industry verticals.

Led by Nolio’s Product Director Ron Gidron, this webinar will show you how to fully automate complex releases while continuing to work in the Team Foundation Server. Mr. Gidron will explore the potential of embedding the extensive capabilities of deployment automation in this environment and demonstrate how it can be implemented.

This event will feature a live demonstration and a dedicated ‘Question and Answer’ session to give participants the opportunity to receive the answers to their specific application release challenges.

Nolio’s Zero Touch Deployment™ offers an end-to-end solution to release challenges encountered throughout the application production line. Integrating Zero Touch Deployment™ with TFS enables agile deployment and sanity testing with every build. Continuous deployments are enabled and development teams can easily deploy multiple applications per day.

“TFS is a great resource for teams that need to coordinate their work in order to efficiently develop integrated software solutions. However, it does not provide the means to automatically perform extremely complex application releases. In this webinar, I intend to demonstrate what IT operations teams can do in order to achieve fully automate releases in this environment.”

This webinar will be held on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 10am GMT.

Registration is free! Click here to register today.

LEARN MORE

You can learn more about this subject in our white paper ‘Integrated Release Deployment Automation with Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010’. This white paper offers a detailed exploration of the implementation of fully automated releases in a Microsoft Team Foundation Server environment.

Click here to download the white paper

Click here to view our resource library

Click here to learn more about Nolio’s automated solutions