Delivertools

Delivertools are a broad class of software tools designed to automate and orchestrate the delivery of software products and other digital content from development to production. They cover the full delivery pipeline, including building, testing, packaging, releasing, deploying, and monitoring changes, with an emphasis on reproducibility and traceability.

Core capabilities typically include continuous integration and build servers, artifact repositories, configuration and release management, deployment orchestration, environment provisioning, and monitoring and telemetry. Many delivertools also provide feature flagging, release automation, and integration with source control systems and issue trackers.

A typical delivertools workflow starts when a developer commits code to a version control system. Automated builds and tests are executed, producing artifacts that are stored in an artifact repository. Releases may pass through approval gates, then are deployed to staging environments for validation before production deployment. Observability and logging enable quick rollback if issues arise.

Delivertools can be deployed on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid configurations. They range from open-source solutions to commercial offerings and can be standalone or part of a larger platform. Containerization and cloud-native patterns have influenced many modern delivertools, promoting modularity and portability.

Benefits include faster release cycles, greater consistency and reproducibility, improved auditability, and easier rollback. Challenges involve managing complexity, ensuring security and compliance, avoiding vendor lock-in, and maintaining the required skill sets.

See also: CI/CD, DevOps, release management, software delivery, automation.