spinnaker

Spinnaker refers to two distinct concepts in nautical and technology contexts. In sailing, a spinnaker is a large, lightweight triangular sail designed for downwind or broad-reach runs. It is typically flown from a spinnaker pole at the bow and is controlled by a dedicated halyard and one or more sheets, sometimes with a downhaul to help shape the sail. There are two main forms: the symmetric spinnaker, which requires a pole and is used on deeper downwind courses, and the asymmetrical spinnaker (often called a gennaker or cruising chute), which does not require a pole and is used on more moderate angles to windward from the beam. Spinnakers are prized for adding speed and sail area in light to moderate winds but require careful handling, tacking and gybing to avoid tangling lines and to keep the sail full.

In software, Spinnaker is an open-source continuous delivery platform originally developed by Netflix to automate deployment pipelines across multiple cloud providers. Released to the public in 2015, it supports deploying applications to environments such as AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes, and other targets. Spinnaker provides a graphical pipeline editor, pluggable integrations with cloud services, and deployment strategies such as canary, blue/green, and rolling updates. Its architecture includes components that interact with cloud providers, orchestrate deployment steps, and manage access and artifacts, enabling teams to automate build, test, and release processes at scale. It has an active community and is widely used in enterprise and cloud-native environments seeking multi-cloud CD capabilities.