rPath Refines Release Automation Platform

RALEIGH, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--rPath, an innovator in automating application deployment and maintenance, today announced enterprise-focused productivity and management enhancements to the rPath release automation platform. The upgrades refine the functionality and user experience of the industry’s first fully version controlled release automation solution, meeting the needs of each stakeholder in the enterprise release management process. These upgrades are the first product delivery against “Project Javelin,” which extends rPath’s unique system version controlled management model into the broader data center automation market.

In related news, rPath today announced a management solution for Red Hat Enterprise Linux; see “rPath Expands Operating System Coverage with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5.”

“For enterprise IT, system complexity is emerging as the greatest threat to cost, compliance and service level agreements,” said Jake Sorofman, vice president of marketing for rPath. “At the center of the complexity challenge is the release management process—the tasks associated with creating, provisioning and maintaining software systems. With this latest rPath version, we’re arming IT organizations with the tools to easily standardize, automate, control and audit their release management processes, reducing delay, operating expenses and compliance risks.”

Release Automation Addresses System Complexity Crisis

System complexity is accelerating in the enterprise, driven by a number of key forces. First, the use of open source, dynamic programming languages and application frameworks means that software is more diverse than ever before. At the same time, the popularity of Agile and other iterative development techniques has dramatically increased the pace of change. Both of these trends place pressure on the IT operations groups responsible for provisioning and maintaining software systems. Making matters worse, virtualization has multiplied the volume of system instances that require management—and cloud computing promises to compound the problem.

In response to the system complexity crisis, rPath has enhanced its release automation platform with richer capabilities for enterprise IT groups. These enhancements include:

• Dashboard reporting – Visualizes the release and system environment, allowing users to understand system compliance, measure software distribution rates and patterns, and take action on release processes and system updates.
• Workflow integration and role-based support – Provides built-in dialogs and workflow supporting key tasks for release engineers, managers and system administrators. In addition, rPath provides seamless API integration with existing workflow, business process management, and service desk tools.
• Release catalog and promotion UI – Provides an easy-to-use, accurate list of approved, deployable software for IT operations. rPath’s UI for release promotion makes it easy to promote/demote system versions between development, testing and production.
• Centralized system inventory – Provides an up-to-date, easy-to-query list of all systems— physical-, virtual-, or cloud-resident—under rPath management, complete with key discovered attributes and required software versions.
• Central control for provisioning and pushing updates – Allows administrators to easily provision systems and updates across single systems or entire data centers, with complete control over maintenance timing and rollback.

According to an October 2009 report titled “The Shifting Sands of IT Compel A New Landscape for IT Automation Tools” by Glenn O’Donnell, senior analyst with Forrester Research, “A combination of forces, including skyrocketing complexity and severe economic pressure, are radically and irreversibly altering the IT landscape. New methods, new functional sourcing, and new organizational structures are needed to address this onslaught, but one theme is obvious throughout all of these approaches—a need to automate more of what you do in IT. The typical IT organization wastes a significant portion of its budget on inefficiencies that only get worse as complexity grows. Automate many of these tasks and you become leaner and more responsive to business changes.”¹

The enhanced rPath release automation platform will help to reduce the time, cost and risk of system creation, provisioning and maintenance, enabling IT operations groups to deliver solutions for some of the most pressing challenges in IT today, including:

• Release Management – taking time, cost and risk out of deployment and maintenance
• Compliance – meeting regulatory demands of PCI, HIPAA, SOX, etc.
• Self-service IT – policy-based automation for speed and control
• Virtualization – managing VM sprawl and optimizing server density
• Cloud Computing – packaging applications as cloud-ready systems
• OS/Platform Management – flexibly creating and maintaining customized platforms with certified, industry-standard components

A whitepaper describing rPath’s release automation solution is available at http://bit.ly/2wEW4N.

For more information on rPath, please visit http://www.rpath.com. For additional perspectives, please visit and subscribe to rPath RSS blog feeds at http://blogs.rpath.com/wpmu/. Follow rPath on Twitter at @rpath.

Additional Resources

rPath website: http://www.rpath.com

rPath blog: http://blogs.rpath.com/wpmu/

rPath on Twitter: @rPath

rPath press releases and commentaries: http://www.rpath.com/corp/news-and-events

rPath videos and podcasts: http://www.rpath.com/corp/audio-and-video

rPath Cloud Computing Adoption Model: http://www.rpath.com/corp/cloud-adoption-model

rPath Knowledge Center: http://www.rpath.com/corp/browse-resources

rPath webinars: http://www.rpath.com/corp/webinar

About rPath

rPath automates application deployment and maintenance across physical, virtual and cloud environments. rPath’s innovative release automation platform is based on the industry’s only commercial version control repository for managing deployed software systems. The result is an easy-to-deploy and cost-effective automation solution for rapid, low-risk and low-overhead deployment and maintenance of complex applications. rPath dramatically improves responsiveness to business lines, reduces compliance risks, and allows resource-constrained IT organizations to significantly reduce operating costs and “do more with less.” Headquartered in Raleigh, NC, rPath has 70+ customers including some of the world’s largest enterprises and ISVs. Visit www.rpath.com.

rPath is a registered trademark of rPath. All other brand names and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Tags: rPath, release automation, release automation platform, data center automation, application deployment, unified automation and control, version control repository

¹ “The Shifting Sands Of IT Compel A New Landscape For IT Automation Tools,” Forrester Research, Inc., October 16, 2009

Contacts:

TECHMarket Communications
Nicole L. Messier, 518-306-4029
press relations for rPath
Nicole@TECHMarket.com
Elena Annuzzi, 650-704-8664
analyst relations for rPath
Elena@TECHMarket.com