The purpose of Deployment Framework
After having developed a software product, the developer needs to deploy it on a customer’s machine. Because products are usually highly customized, its installation and updating is dependent on a technician, who often needs to either visit the customer in person or use a remote desktop or some other support software, which might be an easier solution, yet the technician still needs to be familiar with customer’s environment. The situation gets even more complicated as the number of customers and/or products being developed rises.
The purpose of DEF is to ease up and partially automatize the process of installing products by introducing a centralized system of customers, products and installations. The system allows automatic installations of arbitrary products versions to various environments (which typically are for instance testing, development or production) using customized scripts.
Advantages are also evident even in the case where a software company/developer is maintaining only a single product. It is easier to manage more versions of a single product thanks to the ability to set up various environments and push the versions along development pipeline. Thus, DEF helps during the whole development process, no matter how many products or customers you might have.
How to use
So, what more can you do with DEF?
All your packages in one place:
An easy product management:
Plus:
... Get the idea? :-)