CI/CD software provider CloudBees wants to help developers release software with more flexibility and less risk with the acquisition of the secure feature management company Rollout.
“Our goal is to help organizations deliver great, feature-rich software efficiently while minimizing risks associated with the deployment process,” said Sacha Labourey, CEO and co-founder of CloudBees. “The acquisition of Rollout gives CloudBees customers the flexibility to decouple features from software versions. Using Rollout on their trusted enterprise platform allows developers to test and merge changes with more confidence than ever before.”
With Rollout, developers can control both the roll out and roll back of features instantly on any platform, including mobile, regardless of deployment restrictions, according to the company.
Rollout provides the ability to configure each aspect of feature flags via YAML files stored and version controlled right alongside the application source code.
According to Ben Williams, the vice president of products at CloudBees, Rollout works in three steps:
- Define a set of feature flag objects in an application’s code.
- Register an application with the Rollout dashboard, and add the App Key to the application’s code base.
- Run the application.
“New features or fixes can be rolled out to specific target customers or customer segments to gather focused feedback or to help address issues faced by specific customers in advance of wider availability,” Williams wrote in a blog post. “You can even securely give control of this to non-developer users to remove yourselves from being a bottleneck in the process.”
Williams went on to explain that this acquisition is just another step in the company’s mission to simplify the lives of developers and cater to their delivery and deployment needs. “Whether you are creating your own solo projects, are part of a nascent startup, or are contributing to the products in organizations with thousands of developers – we got you,” he added.
Going forward, users can expect greater investment in Rollout and benefit from CloudBee’ expertise when it comes to DevOps. Rollout’s co-founders will remain a part of Rollout.
“Feature management has a huge opportunity ahead of it, it is one of the simplest yet powerful mechanisms you can have in your toolbox. Long term, we believe feature management is not only going to change software delivery but also software as a whole, making software adaptive to its customers,” Rollout’s co-founders Erez Rosovsk and Eyal Keren wrote in a blog post.
