DevOps tooling

Introduction:???

ArdentCode partnered with Wolters Kluwer to simplify the introduction of the Continuous Deployment/Delivery approach across business units in the organization.?

Focus:?

• Increase the frequency of production deployments and lower the time to market
• Decrease the application project costs

Objective:??

Create a SaaS solution that supports Continuous Deployment of microservice-based applications available for all business units in the organization.?

Needs:?

1. Support AWS and Azure clouds
2. Support zero downtime release roll out/back (blue/green, canary deployment)
3. Allow developers to deploy and test their code in the feature branch environment
4. Provide UI and CLI interfaces
5. Let the application development team use the infrastructure with not need of deep knowledgeknowledge of AWS/Azure
6. Provide logging, monitoring, and alerting to support and troubleshoot the applications in production
7. Provide a solution to run automated tests (UI, API) to detect bugs before release promotion and to monitor the application availability

Approach:?

1. Build extendable architecture that allows to deploy to different Clouds
2. Follow the principle of “infrastructure as a code” to track any changes done to the application and roll them back if needed
3. Allow to define the single endpoint version using simple schema
4. Build API layer to be used by UI and CLI interfaces
5. Build a central mechanism to collect metrics and set up of alerts
6. Follow best practices and organization standards (HA, security, naming)
7. Build a service allowing the execution of automated tests at large scale
8. Build a service executing the automated tests on the new release deployments
9. Allow to set up synthetic tests monitoring with alerting

Results:?

1. Onboarded hundreds of products (VitalLaw is one of them, read previous case study here)

2. Products confirmed that the solution allowed them to:

• Deliver required changes more quickly.
• Make every code change (Pull Request, Merge Request) as a potential release candidate.?
• Rollback to the previous version on demand??
• Improved stability – Lower number of regression bugs. Higher confidence in the release quality.?
• Integrate the solution across all collaborating teams, enhancing collaboration and efficiency.

3. The support teams are using the synthetic monitoring solution to monitor the availability and performance of the application

4. The automated tests execution service allows the execution of a huge number of regression tests in minutes instead of hours.

Conclusion:

The partnership between ArdentCode and Wolters Kluwer resulted in a powerful SaaS solution that redefines deployment practices. By enabling seamless Continuous Deployment, the solution empowers teams to deliver high-quality applications faster, with improved reliability and reduced costs. Its cloud-agnostic capabilities, robust testing mechanisms, and comprehensive monitoring set a new standard for efficiency and collaboration across business units. This achievement underscores the transformative potential of well-designed, scalable infrastructure.