DEVOPSdigest

XebiaLabs announced significant advances to enhance DevOps productivity and scalability for enterprise teams in its latest release, version 7.0 of the XebiaLabs DevOps Platform.

Featuring a redesigned user experience; dual-mode DevOps for code-centric technical users and UI-oriented non-technical users; flexible, integrated release communications through email and ChatOps channels; and real-time, automatic risk assessment for each release, version 7.0 helps users work more efficiently and effectively to release error-free software, on time and at scale.

This latest release of the XebiaLabs DevOps Platform simplifies deployment automation and release orchestration for all types of users, from highly technical developers to operations to release managers to non-technical business unit owners.

7.0 Release Highlights:

- Streamlined Software Release Flow with New User Experience: The XebiaLabs DevOps Platform version 7.0 introduces a new user interface and powerful features to improve user experience. Significant user research yielded a new UI design that makes users more productive. It streamlines deployment tasks, and adds wizards, improved views and reports, as well as an enhanced, granular search. This delivers significant time and cost savings when applied over many users and teams, and thousands of releases per month.

Furthermore, new blackout period management eliminates manual intervention and simplifies release coordination. Blackout periods let teams specify times during which apps cannot be released, such as holidays or end-of-quarter blackout windows.

- Targeted, Clear Communications with Flexible Notifications and Alerts: New notification features add flexibility to the way users can be notified of important release events that require action. To avoid “alert fatigue,” teams have detailed control over who receives which alerts, so users won’t “tune out” and ignore the notifications that matter most. Plus, users can choose their preferred way to be notified with more email options, a new “due soon” notification and integrations with popular ChatOps tools such as Slack, HipChat and Pager Duty.

- Choice of Work Style - Enhanced Release as Code Features for Dual-mode Enterprise DevOps: The new dual-mode “Release as Code” capability lets teams define releases entirely with code in addition to using the familiar visual user interface. This capability allows experienced developers to use programming code instead of a graphical user interface to quickly create new releases while using the same standard DevOps platform and process as all other users. This simplifies adoption of DevOps processes across an organization while enforcing standardization and consistency across releases.

Additionally, releases can be automatically launched from other code-centric tools like Jenkins, or they can trigger such tools. Release templates can now be exported in code as well as previewed in the user interface, making templates easy to copy and reuse. Dual-mode capability gives users the choice of code-centric release definition or XebiaLabs' GUI-centric workflow, letting them work in the way most efficient for them.

- Focused Troubleshooting - Release Risk Assessed in Real Time: Enterprise IT teams can now easily tell which releases are in jeopardy with XebiaLabs’ automated risk assessment, calculated in real time for each software release. The platform automatically reviews multiple risk factors to determine an overall release risk score, clearly displaying a green-yellow-red risk status in a release overview management view.

Enterprise release managers can see at a glance which ones of their tens or hundreds of ongoing releases are in trouble. They can drill down to see detailed risk information on each individual release’s dashboard so they can review and address the issues that have led to that release’s “At Risk” rating. This DevOps Intelligence provides early warning of problems, giving teams time to solve issues and avoid delays before major trouble occurs.

The XebiaLabs DevOps Platform version 7.0 is available immediately.