Flyer Release Control

Orchestrated Release Management

Solve application release complexities, gain visibility and control, and track releases all the way to production.

Introduction manage­ment with a flexible process-centric approach, enabling enterprises to gain visibility “Operations can now focus on their CHALLENGES and efficiency across the “path to production.” work instead of manually deploying Release management processes have been characterized by a lack of visibility and trace- software for the development ability, poor coordination, and time-consuming Micro Focus Release Control is a complete life- department all the time.” manual tasks that are prone to error and dif- cycle release management solution, enabling ficult to track. These processes often resemble release managers to manage the release pro- RELEASE MANAGER a complex web of communications that involves cess, including planning, scheduling, reporting, Global Insurance Company phone calls, email, and weekly meetings, where and approvals. With Release Control, organiza- structure is lacking, and people are unintention- tions can orchestrate the planning, control, and ally left out of the loop. Release teams spend too coordination of all releases using workflows much time chasing information that was dropped designed for their specific release policies. or missed in the handoff and have little visibility Notification and reporting to all release stake- and lead-time on what’s coming downstream holders occur automatically, ensuring that the from development. This results in late night and status of releases is communicated accurately weekend deployments that require large release and promptly and that there are no surprises teams, manual tasks, and many heroics. regarding release schedules. Additionally, handoffs between development, QA, and IT Additionally, as development teams increas- Operations are streamlined and accelerated. ingly adopt Agile development methodologies, release management has become even more of Micro Focus Release Control is built on a a bottleneck, delaying key application deploy- proven, underlying process management en- ments at a time when businesses rely on soft- terprise platform that is used by over 1,500 ware for competitive advantage and innovation. companies globally. This platform allows cus- tomers to unify and automate processes and From this extreme disorder and growing num- connect teams with tools, making Release ber of releases, the industry sees a backlog of Control the most comprehensive solution in changes that can pose significant risk to soft- the marketplace. ware release schedules and a company’s over- all competitiveness, profitability, and reputation. BENEFITS Micro Focus Release Control helps organi- SOLUTION zations drive efficiency into their application Micro Focus® Release Control helps en- development, IT operations, and development terprises meet the challenges of release operations through better planning, control, and Flyer Orchestrated Release Management

process automation of the continuous delivery Deploying Application Changes of changes (major, minor, and emergency) to Key Highlights Efficiently and Effectively Is Acquire Actionable Insight: Provide the applications that support business agility Critical for Success and competitiveness. These efficiencies give visibility into the release status, What if you could: companies the ability to choose how to make foresee potential issues, and take best use of their savings to introduce more in- ­action to avoid missing milestones Reduce your release window by 90%? novation in the same amount of time, shorten Remove Release Process Improve the production readiness and the deployment time, or spend more time on Inefficiency: Release more often, quality of your application code? quality control. release more each time, and reduce Avoid “But it worked in our environment” the release window by providing a discussions? Offering a unique approach by orchestrating standard, repeatable release process Eliminate lengthy email threads trying to release management, Micro Focus Release that manages application releases achieve change approval? Control maximizes an organization’s business according to release policies and Avoid poorly executed software hand- agility while optimizing its current investments business priorities in processes, technologies, people, and plat- offs between development, testing, and forms. With Micro Focus Release Control help- Replace Ineffective Handoffs: operations? Eliminate error-prone and time- ing to create a single, proven path to production, Without a coordinated release process, organi- businesses can deploy more applications faster consuming handoffs by simplifying zations will have difficulty meeting the expecta- with greater consistency and auditability—all and automating the handoffs tions of the business. Furthermore, a lack of without increasing deployment staff levels. across development, quality, effective release management contributes to and operations teams the majority of production incidents in large or- Why Micro Focus Simplify Compliance: Be audit- ganizations with complex IT services. Increasing Micro Focus understands the challenges of ready in minutes through a release release efficiency and coordination to improve Release Management and has been in this governance framework that is the production readiness of code can have a business for more than a decade. We enable based on your release processes significant positive financial impact. you to achieve quick wins by immediately au- and policies tomating manual deployment tasks. Based on Enhancing applications after deployment is our extensive customer success experiences, expected; resolving costly production down- we have assembled a comprehensive Release Our Release Control product is an integral part time is not. Having an efficient and effective Management solution that allows you to mature of the Micro Focus Orchestrated IT solution set, release management process as part of overall your organization into a coordinated, process- which extends from initial planning, through application lifecycle management is critical for driven, highly visible human workflow at the development, and into IT service management, business success. pace best suited for you. for distributed, cloud, and mainframe environ- ments. Orchestrated IT means streamlined IT Orchestrated Release Management processes that deliver applications faster, im- Micro Focus helps IT operations and applica- prove IT service performance, and lower overall tion development teams improve the delivery “Through standardization IT costs. The Micro Focus family of orchestrated of application releases by providing a common and automated deployment, IT products works together to deliver the speed, and secure orchestrated release management we have reduced implementation automation, and control demanded by today’s solution based on the organization’s release errors by 75% with the same application development and IT operations policies and processes. Unlike isolated release level of staffing.” organizations. Micro Focus has helped thou- management tools, Micro Focus provides an in- sands of IT organizations make dramatic im- tegrated solution for release management that provements to their application development IT VICE PRESIDENT enables you to automate and streamline your processes by ensuring greater visibility, faster release management process and integrate Global 500 Banking Company time to market, higher stakeholder satisfaction, your release teams—supporting distributed, and lower development costs. cloud, mobile, and mainframe systems.

2 stakeholders occur automatically, ensuring Micro Focus Release Control is built on a proven, that the status of releases is communicated underlying process management platform accurately and promptly and that there are no (Micro Focus Solutions Business Manager) surprises regarding release schedules. Addi­ ­ that unifies and automates processes that con- tionally, exit criteria is tracked and managed for nect teams with tools; this platform is currently each stage of the release. in use by over 1,500 companies globally. Micro Focus Release Control provides bidirectional Micro Focus Release Control provides action- information and feedback between all release able insight and visibility to all stakeholders us- teams. For example, Micro Focus Release Figure 1. It’s important to provide captions from the start to avoid possible time-consuming rework later. ing a visual release calendar and dashboard to Control can capture deployment tasks and display release status, release packages, and environmental information between develop- Micro Focus customers have been able to dra- release trains. ment, QA, and operations teams. matically shorten release times, increase the quality of application code, and reduce deploy- ment costs. Customer examples include: Reduction in time of 90% to put changes into production Greater control over the end-to-end release process with full traceability— from release definition through to release documentation Figure 2. Release Timeline Views provides real-time Figure 3. Deployment tasks for an application. Single view of all planned projects and status and progress of your releases. changes, greater control over what Tasks can be aggregated from many teams and moves into production The timeline view helps organizations track all then automatically scheduled and executed application releases across all release trains, Accelerated time-to-market by 80% and repeatedly across all environments. Valuable months, and even years in advance. As soon increased efficiency by 50% feedback and feed forward information is cap- as the status of a release changes, the release tured, and end-to-end traceability is recorded. With Micro Focus Release Control, you can calendar automatically shares the updated in- orchestrate your DevOps-oriented application formation with all stakeholders, including busi- Integrating teams with current tool sets is an release processes into a complete release ness owners, developers, QA teams, DevOps, absolute requirement, and Micro Focus Release lifecycle. Continuous delivery and developer and IT operations staff. Control has an extensive integration list across self-service deployments speed up the de- the entire end-to-end tool chain. Do you have velopment and test phases, while managing Avoid Error-Prone Handoffs automation or deployment tools? No problem, releases through stage gates with exit criteria Micro Focus Release Control integrates with ensures that the highest quality code is de- Between Teams deployment tools to enable customers to or- ployed into your production environments. IT operations and application development must work more closely than ever to deliver the ap- chestrate their entire release process. This helps plication services that the business demands. customers avoid automating bad processes. Gain Actionable Insight and DevOps is the movement that focuses on improv- Control of the Release ing the collaboration and coordination between People, process, and tools—Micro Focus With Micro Focus Release Control, organiza- application development, QA, and IT operations Release Control provides a perfect enterprise tions can orchestrate the planning, control, teams. Ultimately, technology and process must solution to solve the complexities of release and coordination of all releases using work- connect these teams; then, and only then, will management. flows designed for their specific release poli- the applications be delivered with the timeliness cies. Notification and reporting to all release and quality that the business demands.

www.microfocus.com 3 “Micro Focus solutions support our application lifecycle management process, allowing us a 99.9% success rate in rolling out changes and giving us the ability to roll back with confidence if necessary.”

IT DIRECTOR Global Telecommunications

www.microfocus.com

Summary compliance. Customers who are using Micro Micro Focus offers the most comprehensive Focus’s comprehensive release management end-to-end solution for planning, tracking, and solutions are already realizing dramatic re- releasing applications into production. With sults—much shorter deployment times, greater Micro Focus Micro Focus Release Control, organizations visibility, fewer application errors, and complete UK Headquarters can improve release visibility, increase release auditability. United Kingdom flow, reduce production downtime, and simplify +44 (0) 1635 565200 U.S. Headquarters Rockville, Maryland 301 838 5000 877 772 4450

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