White Paper Advisory: “A Version to Rule them All”; Making the Case for Strong Version Control in IT Ops

Business Wire, June 23, 2009

Available Today, Brief Reveals How IT Operations Can Improve the Management of Deployed Systems Using Strong Version Control as a Foundation

RALEIGH, N.C. -- The dynamic nature and complexity of the software development process has required organizations to enforce strong version control as the basis for managing code artifacts. This approach tames complexity and risk by providing a controlled mechanism for implementing change—and a basis for reversal when things break, which they invariably do.

But, today, the principles of strong version control are rarely applied in IT operations. rPath believes this must change.

In a short white paper, rPath makes the case for taking the lessons of strong version control learned in software development and applying them to the world of IT operations, where the management of deployed software systems is typically manual and chaotic. With strong version control as the basis for managing running systems, deployment and change becomes automated, controlled and predictable—resulting in a lower overhead, more compliant and responsive model for systems management.

What: “A Version to Rule them All”

Who: IT operations managers, release and deployment managers, system administration and automation personnel, CIO and compliance executives, and others seeking to improve the management of deployed systems.

Why: Maintaining deployed systems today is not unlike the challenge of managing code artifacts without a version control system in place. These systems comprise interdependent application and infrastructure components that evolve based on their own independent lifecycles. When interdependent parts change independently, conflict is unavoidable. When dependencies aren’t explicitly understood, conflicts become collisions that break running applications. In turn, IT is forced to spend inordinate time isolating and resolving issues, prolonging delays and increasing costs and compliance risks for the business.

How: Download this free white paper at http://tinyurl.com/rpath-versiontorulethemall.

Readers of “A Version to Rule them All” will learn about the advantages of strong version control for managing deployed systems in IT operations, including:

• automated maintenance of running systems,
• incremental delivery of updates and patches,
• the ability to easily roll back system changes to isolate conflicts,
• complete audit and reproduction of systems over time, and
• the ability to generate system image outputs on demand.

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About rPath

rPath is widely recognized as a pioneer in solutions for reducing the cost and complexity of delivering enterprise applications to traditional, virtualized and cloud-based environments. Leading ISVs and enterprises rely on rBuilder and the rPath Lifecycle Management Platform for rapid deployment and low-overhead management and maintenance of complex application workloads. This dramatically improves business agility and allows resource-constrained IT organizations to “do more with less” by reducing the cost and complexity of application delivery. By producing application images and virtual appliances that can run virtually anywhere, rPath frees the application from the underlying hardware, simplifying deployment, portability and promoting scalability in response to dynamic demand. rPath is headquartered in Raleigh, NC. Visit www.rpath.com.

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