Shippable Updates Docker-Based CI Platform
Shippable‘s continuous integration (CI) platform has received new automation and visibility features with the release of what the company is calling the next-generation version of the Docker-based product.
Like other CI platforms, such as Jenkins and TeamCity, Shippable is designed to streamline the process of writing, building and delivering code across a continuous delivery pipeline.
Shippable offers a hosted CI platform built on Docker, however. That means not only can the company help developers create apps for containers, but it actually uses containers to support a production workload.
Plus, the company itself uses its own platform for development. “Initially, we added features mainly for ourselves,” Avi Cavale, the company’s co-founder and CEO, said. “In the last year, as our customer base grew tremendously and as containers gained mainstream acceptance, our road map became customer driven and this has helped us make the platform generic.”
So, if you’re wondering who’s using Docker containers in production, here’s part of the answer.
New Features in Shippable
The new release adds automation features to the platform. Shippable now can automate application releases.
In addition, the platform has gained a new declarative pipeline language for defining workflows in YAML configuration files. This change also adds automation. It lets DevOps teams configure a single delivery pipeline to orchestrate their entire workflow.
Shippable now supports deployments to multiple clouds, too. The company is pitching this functionality, which users can also implement using YAML configuration files, as an easy way to build disaster recovery and automated failover into their DevOps workflow.
Shippable continues to support on-premises deployment as well, however. Users can run deliver to on-premises environments as well as to the cloud for the same workflow. The company says this feature can help to separate on-premises production environments from backup environments in the cloud, if desired.
The final major feature update in Shippable is a visualization tool. The platform now offers a “single pane of glass,” according to the developers, which lets teams track the status of their entire workflow. Since constant communication and visibility are key parts of the DevOps conversation, this visibility feature is likely to appeal to organizations seeking a more DevOps-inspired approach to software delivery.
