DevOps for Oracle Cloud with Flexagon FlexDeploy

July 7, 2020 | 4 minute read
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Historical approaches to software development and deployment have relied on manual and script-based methods for deploying changes to infrastructure, code, and configurations. This approach often leads to slow, labor-intensive, and error-prone delivery of software. You’re looking for ways to accelerate development and delivery and want to improve quality and effectively manage cost and risk.

DevOps, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), release orchestration, and the growth of cloud help drive these improvements. Flexagon’s FlexDeploy is a DevOps platform for continuous delivery and release automation. It orchestrates and automates the software build, deploy, and release lifecycle, improving speed, quality and cost of delivering Oracle Cloud, Fusion Middleware, and non-Oracle technologies. With Flexagon’s FlexDeploy application, now available on Oracle Cloud Marketplace, you can establish repeatable development and deployment processes with only a few clicks.

FlexDeploy DevOps Platform Overview

FlexDeploy is a DevOps platform for CI/CD and release orchestration which includes support for cloud provisioning and configuration management, build and deployment automation, and release orchestration across cloud infrastructure, platform, and application services.

A graphic depicting the Release Orchestration for FlexDeploy.

Using FlexDeploy for Oracle Cloud, you can quickly and easily stand up, tear down, and automate the software development lifecycle using out-of-the-box plugins and integrations for the Oracle ecosystem, open source, and many third-party tools and technologies in the cloud and on-premises. The plugins integrate the toolchain while eliminating the manual activities and scripting, which is often required to manage changes across environments.

Pairing FlexDeploy with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure gives you the following benefits:

  • Automate, speed up, and standardize the provisioning, build, deploy, and release lifecycle. Launch and scale new apps quickly with on-demand infrastructure.

  • Maximize IT spending. Minimize your costs by paying for only what you consume.

  • Reduce errors and lower the risk of deployment errors causing application and service outages.

  • Improve team satisfaction by focusing staff on more valuable and enjoyable work.

A graphic depitcing the pre-built integrations and plugins that come with FlexDeploy on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

FlexDeploy provides extensive native support for the following Oracle Cloud IaaS, PaaS, and many traditional Oracle Database, Middleware, and application products running on-premises or in the cloud:

  • Cloud Infrastructure: Kubernetes Engine, API platform, and Serverless Functions

  • Cloud Platform: Integration (OIC), Java, SOA, and database

  • Traditional products: E-Business Suite, WebLogic, SOA, OBIEE, ODI, Database, APEX, and JET

     

Putting It into Practice

I recently worked with a manufacturing customer who experienced the benefits of using FlexDeploy with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Oracle Integration Cloud. The IT group had been using manual processes to manage their software delivery and were facing challenges with errors, visibility, and reporting.

The team spent the beginning of 2019 getting the pieces in place and went live with their FlexDeploy implementation in April 2019. On day one, they went live with support for Oracle EBS running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Oracle SOA Suite, and Enterprise Data Warehouse.

The apps manager recalled that the first weekend following the release, “I was deploying to our production environment from FlexDeploy for all of those major systems.” They have since added support for Oracle Integration Cloud, Informatica, Oracle Business Intelligence, and Microsoft BizTalk. The following benefits were seen immediately:

  • Reduced deployment time by 60 times by reducing in manual steps, increasing automation, and introducing pipelines that incorporated scheduling and dependency execution.

  • Cut off-hours support two hours a night

  • Ability to accurately report on deployment timelines

  • Significantly improved the time from a request being raised to deployment. When an approval gate is met, the deployment is automatically in queue to run in the next deployment window.

The team had struggled with early mornings, outages, user errors, tracking and visibility, and extensive manual processes. FlexDeploy offered them a total solution, thus simplifying their processes. What one person previously completed in a day, can now be finished in 15 minutes. Plus, there are fewer errors, more visibility, and immediate feedback. Amazed with the simplicity and the elimination of long-lived struggles, the apps manager recalled thinking, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Try It Now

Are you ready to establish repeatable and efficient processes and spend more time delivering business applications? FlexDeploy is available as a free listing on Oracle Cloud Marketplace. Visit the Marketplace listing to learn more!

About the Guest Author:

Dan Goerdt is the president and co-founder of Flexagon, and he leads the strategy and business development of products and services. Dan has been in technology leadership roles for the past 20 years, focusing on operating system and Middleware product development, technology architecture, and software solution delivery. His extensive experience with software automation contributed to the genesis and evolution of Flexagon’s innovative DevOps and continuous delivery solution, FlexDeploy. Find him on LinkedIn.

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