3 Ways to Modernize Your Application Deployment Strategies

We often see a “pendulum swing” effect in the software development realm in configuration management. The shift between “centralize everything” and “decentralize everything” seems to sway back and forth every decade. What feels new today is a pattern we’ve seen before. This helps us better understand what the future of application deployment looks like.

Currently, deployment teams are in flux, with DevOps and application development teams starting to own different parts of the deployment phase in the SDLC. While DevOps has traditionally owned the entire process, application developers are now getting more involved at each stage. DevOps teams are transitioning to a platform engineering role, enabling them to create internal tools that allow application developers self-service access to deployment processes, including configuration management.

This trend, coupled with the rise of Kubernetes-centric deployment tools, is changing how applications are deployed. For your organization to keep up with the times and repeatedly deliver resilient, reliable deploys, you need to know how to stay ahead of the curve.

Here are three ways to modernize your application deployment strategies to prepare for the future.

Dive Deeper Into Current Processes

Historically, application deployments have required a lot of hard work from developers and DevOps personnel. Now that the cloud has become the ubiquitous platform for companies, big and small, the old tools and processes don’t fit this new paradigm.

Luckily, deployment teams are beginning to identify ways to reduce the toil required by application developers and DevOps personnel to streamline and simplify deployments. Configuration friction and sprawl is the leading cause of deployment toil. Teams invest in new tools, processes, and best practices to increase deployment velocity and reliability. 

Additionally, organizations are giving more self-service access to their application developers by enabling “shift left” strategies. This refers to shifting security, testing, and performance reviews earlier in the application development lifecycle. This security and quality are prioritized earlier in the software development life cycle, reducing errors that are costly to fix later.

Removing the friction between each stage of the application deployment lifecycle ultimately allows your teams to deploy more joyfully. To modernize your current strategies and help your team work more efficiently, look to reduce friction wherever possible.

Invest in Internal Developer Platforms

Developers' best and most productive work occurs when they can focus on designing and writing code and not suffer the distractions caused by context switching.  

Increased productivity and deployment velocity are intrinsically linked to one another. Investing in internal developer platforms is an effective way to remove the toil and increase deployment velocity.

Internal developer platforms enable your developers to manage their own self-serve environments, databases, and more. An internal productivity platform streamlines the deployment processes and, in turn, enables developers to focus on the work that matters most to them. Until now, creating build environments was a tedious, time-consuming process that can add days of extra work to a sprint. 

Less time spent on tedious tasks means more time to ensure consistent, reliable, and quality deployments. The trickle-down effect of investing in internal developer platforms can lead to increased deployment velocity, reduced misconfigurations, and enhanced team productivity.

Consider a Hybrid Deployment Model

The emergence of the cloud hasn’t just forced companies to reconsider their existing tools and processes. It’s also led to a widespread migration of workloads away from on-premise infrastructures and the increasing popularity of hybrid and multi-cloud environments. 

Regarding scalability, security, cost, and speed, it’s hard to find a better cloud utilization model than a hybrid approach.

Hybrid cloud deployments combine multiple cloud types, such as on-premises, public, or private cloud services. Leveraging local build environments stored on a private cloud while benefiting from public cloud services gives deployment teams the best of both worlds. For this reason, adopting a hybrid deployment model should be on your organization’s high-priority to-do list.

A hybrid cloud deployment model gives your teams an agility and innovation boost without sacrificing anything from a security or risk perspective. Your teams will be able to build cloud-native applications with practically zero architectural dependence on any single cloud provider. Having this kind of flexibility and scalability is critical in today’s world.

Prepare for the Future of Application Deployment

Looking ahead, optimized cloud configuration management is no longer a nicety — it’s a necessity. To keep pace with competitors and empower your DevOps and developers to do their best work, you need tools that ensure you’re ready for whatever the future may hold. 

Tools like CloudTruth.

Our platform unifies access and visibility into your organization’s infrastructure, application, and secrets configuration data. By leveraging CloudTruth’s API, CLI, and GUI, companies can manage their parameters, templates, environment variables, and secrets from one central location. Best of all, CloudTruth works to strengthen your existing tools and systems, meaning you won’t have to start your tech stack from scratch when you work with us.

Software developers and CloudOps teams rely on CloudTruth to ensure uptime, security, and team velocity. Learn more about our solutions or create a free forever account to see what CloudTruth can unlock for your teams.