Companies increasingly turn to CI/CD services to stay competitive and streamline software delivery. These Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) services help businesses optimize their development workflows, accelerate release timelines, and ensure they can quickly adapt to the fast-changing digital domain. Efficient CI/CD implementation and CI/CD practices are crucial in maintaining an edge over competitors by delivering higher-quality software faster and with fewer errors.
By integrating CI/CD services into their processes, businesses can enhance collaboration, automate testing, and ensure continuous deployment, driving innovation and operational efficiency.
What sets Veritis apart is our focus on both automation and security. We integrate CI/CD pipeline security from the ground up, ensuring your DevOps processes are fortified against emerging threats. Our solutions emphasize achieving a perfect balance between operational efficiency and robust security, offering assurance to senior executives and cultivating an atmosphere encouraging innovation and growth. Veritis’ expert team ensures that your CI/CD automation speeds up processes and enhances developer satisfaction and talent retention by reducing manual bottlenecks. With Veritis, businesses experience a secure, agile, and fully optimized DevOps ecosystem that drives sustained success.
Introduction: CI and CD
Continuous Integration (CI)
Continuous Integration (CI) is a core component of CI/CD services, where code changes are continuously merged into a shared repository. This CI/CD process involves developers frequently integrating their code into the repository, ideally, multiple times a day, triggering automated builds and tests. CI/CD DevOps practices ensure that each integration undergoes a rigorous automated build and testing phase, using various CI/CD tools to identify and fix issues early.
By implementing CI/CD automation, teams can streamline the entire CI/CD pipeline, enhancing DevOps continuous integration efficiency. Automated builds and tests allow quicker bug identification, improving software quality and reducing the time required to validate and release updates. Additionally, CI/CD pipeline security is critical, ensuring security measures are embedded in the development process.
Key benefits of this approach include improved CI/CD security, faster deployments, and enhanced software quality, all made possible through robust CI/CD tools and a well-structured CI/CD pipeline. This approach helps ensure that software updates are delivered faster, more reliably, and more securely.
Continuous Delivery (CD)
Continuous Delivery (CD) is an advanced software development practice that builds upon Continuous Integration (CI) by automating the building, testing, configuring, and preparing code changes for production release. While CI focuses on merging code and running automated tests, CD takes it further by ensuring that every code change is automatically deployed to testing and production environments after the build stage, streamlining the CI/CD pipeline.
In a robust CI/CD DevOps setup, CD helps teams automate testing beyond simple unit tests, covering functional, integration, and performance tests. This enables developers to thoroughly validate code changes across multiple dimensions, ensuring higher software quality and reducing the chances of defects making it to production. By integrating CI/CD tools into the process, the team can efficiently manage everything from automated builds to deployments, enhancing the overall CI/CD automation process.
The CD also strengthens DevOps continuous integration by enabling frequent and reliable updates, reducing manual intervention, and accelerating software delivery. In addition to the technical benefits, it bolsters CI/CD pipeline security by ensuring that all changes undergo comprehensive testing and validation before being released. Using effective CI/CD tools, teams can ensure that security checks and validations are embedded into the CI/CD process, safeguarding against vulnerabilities.
Overall, Continuous Delivery enables a seamless, automated flow from code integration to production, helping teams optimize their CI/CD services while maintaining rigorous CI/CD security standards throughout the development cycle.
Continuous Deployment – Fully Automated Delivery
The critical distinction between continuous delivery and continuous deployment is the absence of manual approval. Unlike continuous delivery, continuous deployment automates software release into production without explicit approval.
In a robust CI/CD pipeline, continuous deployment utilizes CI/CD tools and automation to push code changes that pass all testing stages directly into production. This streamlines the CI/CD process, enhances speed, and minimizes human intervention, reducing the risk of errors.
By integrating continuous deployment into CI/CD DevOps practices, teams can optimize their CI/CD services, accelerating delivery while maintaining CI/CD pipeline security. Automated testing and security checks throughout the CI/CD automation process ensure that only validated, secure code reaches production, enhancing efficiency and security across the DevOps continuous integration workflow.
Veritis CI/CD Service Offerings
We offer end-to-end DevOps CI/CD services to enable developers and IT operations teams to rapidly and securely deliver software.
Our CI/CD service offerings (as a service) help you securely store and apply version control to your application’s source code.
CI/CD Design Services
- Tooling definition and selection
- CI/CD strategy and roadmap designing
CI/CD Implementation Services
- Current infrastructure analysis
- Addressing bottlenecks
- Tech stack selection
- End-to-end CI/CD implementation
- Maintenance and optimization
CI/CD Consulting Services
- CI/CD pipelines auditing
- Consulting and control of the execution
Useful Link: Integrating Smart Test Automation Framework With CI/CD Pipelines
Our CI/CD Solutions
With a slew of CI/CD tools available in the market, it can be challenging for the Dev and Ops teams to pick the right tools. Here are some of the best CI/CD tools and their key features to make the selection process easier for your team.
Detail | CircleCI | TeamCity | Jenkins | Bamboo | GitLab |
Open-source | No | No | Yes | No | No |
Ease of use and setup | Medium | Medium | Medium | Medium | Medium |
Integration | Normal | Good | Excellent | Normal | Good |
Hosting | Cloud and on-premises | On-premises | Cloud and on-premises | On-premises and Bitbucket as Cloud | Cloud and on-premises |
Free version | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Build agent license pricing | From USD 39/month | From USD 299 one-off payment | Free | From USD 10 one-off payment | From USD 4 per month per user |
Supported OSs | Linux, macOS | Windows, Linux, macOS, Solaris, FreeBSD | Windows, Linux, macOS, Unix-like OS | Windows, Linux, macOS, Solaris | Linux distributions: Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, Oracle Linux |
Unique Features | • Integrates with Bitbucket, GitHub, and GitHub Enterprise • Easy debugging • Automated parallelization • Continuous, branch-specific deployment | • Runs parallel builds simultaneously on multiple environments • Easy to customize, interact, and extend the server • Keeps CI server functional and stable | • Easy installation and upgradation on various OSs • Simple and user-friendly interface • Supports distributed builds with master-slave architecture | • Supports up to 100 remote build agents • Parallelly runs batches of tests and gets feedback quickly • Easily creates images and pushes them into a registry | • View, create, and manage codes and project data through branching tools • Design, develop, and manage codes and project data from a single version control • Automates and shortens releases and delivery of applications |
Best CI/CD Tools
While many businesses are familiar with popular CI/CD tools like Jenkins and GitLab, highly effective solutions can provide unique advantages based on your specific needs. Veritis provides customized CI/CD services to meet your business objectives, guaranteeing smooth CI/CD automation and streamlined development and deployment across various environments. Our CI/CD DevOps expertise allows us to design and implement pipelines that optimize your software delivery lifecycle, making your DevOps continuous integration processes faster, more efficient, and more secure.
1) Tekton Pipelines
Tekton Pipelines is an innovative CI/CD tool for Kubernetes platforms. It provides a standardized, cloud-native experience supporting container CI/CD automation. By integrating Tekton Pipelines, Veritis enables your organization to manage and scale CI/CD pipelines efficiently across cloud and on-prem environments, ensuring that your CI/CD process remains streamlined.
2) GoCD
GoCD focuses on visualizing and modeling complex CI/CD pipelines, providing transparency over the entire CI/CD process. This makes it ideal for organizations that need insight and control over each step of their software delivery. Veritis helps implement GoCD to ensure that every phase, from DevOps continuous integration to deployment, is optimized for visibility and efficiency, allowing for better decision-making.
3) Spinnaker
Spinnaker is a robust CI/CD tool built for multicloud environments, enabling smooth CI/CD DevOps processes across cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Veritis uses Spinnaker to enhance CI/CD pipeline flexibility, ensuring your business can seamlessly deploy across multiple clouds while maintaining the integrity of the entire CI/CD process.
4) Concourse
Concourse, often called an “open-source continuous thing-doer,” is a versatile CI/CD tool that allows you to define CI/CD pipelines as code. Veritis customizes Concourse to fit your unique workflows, ensuring CI/CD automation is effectively implemented and provides consistent, scalable results for development and deployment.
5) Screwdriver
Screwdriver is a highly efficient CI/CD tool that automates builds, tests, and deployments. Veritis implements Screwdriver to empower agile teams. It reduces the complexities of traditional CI/CD pipelines while allowing for rapid iteration and continuous deployment, ensuring that your CI/CD process remains fast and responsive.
Useful Link: Fortifying Your CI/CD Environment: Best Practices for Defending Against Security Threats
6) Managed CI/CD Tools
In addition to open-source solutions, Veritis provides expertise in implementing managed CI/CD services from major cloud providers, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as platforms like GitLab, CircleCI, Travis CI, and Atlassian Bamboo. These managed solutions are integrated into your business to deliver efficient, scalable, and secure CI/CD pipelines, helping automate the CI/CD process across multiple environments.
7) CircleCI
CircleCI is a cloud-native CI/CD tool known for its rapid build and test capabilities. It integrates with various version control systems (VCS) like GitHub and Bitbucket, allowing easy-to-configure automated workflows. It uses “orbs,” reusable packages, to streamline setup, making it ideal for CI/CD DevOps processes. Veritis can use CircleCI for large-scale, multi-environment deployments focusing on scalability and speed.
8) GitLab CI/CD
GitLab’s integrated CI/CD capabilities will continue to lead in the current market due to its all-in-one platform, which includes continuous integration, container registry, and DevSecOps. Its Auto DevOps feature simplifies the setup for CI/CD pipelines by automatically following best practices. Veritis can leverage GitLab CI/CD’s security features, like dynamic and static application security testing (DAST/SAST), for clients who need strong CI/CD pipeline security.
9) AWS CodePipeline
AWS CodePipeline is an AWS-native service that automates the build, test, and deployment process. It’s ideal for businesses already utilizing AWS services, as it integrates seamlessly with AWS tools like CodeBuild and CodeDeploy. Veritis can implement CodePipeline to automate complex workflows in AWS-based environments, ensuring consistent delivery across cloud platforms.
10) Buddy
Buddy is a modern CI/CD tool that excels at automation with pre-configured pipelines and Docker support. It offers optimized Docker caching for faster builds and parallelism to maximize resource efficiency. For businesses requiring CI/CD automation, Veritis can use Buddy to streamline the entire process with its easy setup and integration options for Git, GitHub, and GitLab.
11) TeamCity
JetBrain’s TeamCity is recognized for its robust build pipelines and comprehensive feedback loops during development. It allows flexible configuration and reuse of project settings. Veritis can implement TeamCity for complex CI/CD needs where distributed testing and parallel builds are necessary to optimize delivery pipelines.
Security is critical in any CI/CD strategy, and Veritis strongly emphasizes CI/CD security. By embedding CI/CD pipeline security into the automation process from the outset, we ensure that every deployment is protected, compliant, and safeguarded against vulnerabilities. This proactive approach to CI/CD security ensures that your entire pipeline, from development to production, remains secure while delivering rapid, reliable software updates.
With Veritis, your business can access industry-leading CI/CD tools and expertise in creating secure, automated pipelines that drive continuous delivery. Our comprehensive CI/CD services ensure your DevOps ecosystem is optimized and safeguarded at every step, providing the foundation for sustained business growth and innovation.
Useful Link: CI/CD Pipeline: 15 Best Practices for Successful Test Automation
CI/CD Implementation
Organizations must embark on a scalable CI/CD DevOps implementation to harness the full potential of the modern DevOps environment. This implementation lays a strong foundation for enabling agile DevOps for your business.
Here are the four different stages of CI/CD implementation:
1) Commit
- In this stage, new features and new codes are integrated with the base
- Checking code quality using the feedback system
- Performing a series of unit tests and sanity tests with CI/CD tools
- For example, Jenkins helps automate the complete software development lifecycle
2) Build
- The second stage is built once the code is tested and integrated
- In this stage, developers push the artifacts into the registry
- For example, the Docker tool is used to build servers and deploy the artifacts into the registry so they can be ready for testing
3) Test
- In the testing stage, alpha and beta deployments will take place
- At the alpha deployment stage, developers check the performance of their new builds and the interactions between the builds
- Beta deployment is where manual testing takes place to double-check the application before pushing it to production
4) Production Deployment
- This is the fourth and final stage, where the application goes live
- Once the build passes through all the testing phases successfully, it is ready to be deployed to the production stage for the end-user environment
Useful Link: Serverless Vs Containers: Comparison Between 2 Cloud Services
Business Benefits of CI/CD
The CI/CD methodology broadly offers the following benefits to businesses:
1) Efficient Software Delivery
With continuous delivery, your team can automatically build, test, and prepare code changes for production release, enabling a more efficient and rapid software delivery.
2) Improved Team Productivity
CI/CD practices improve your team’s productivity by freeing developers from manual tasks and reducing the number of errors and bugs deployed to customers.
3) Identify and Fix Bugs Quicker
With CI/CD, your team can perform more frequent and comprehensive testing and quickly identify and address bugs earlier. Continuous delivery enables you to perform additional types of code tests efficiently. The discipline of ‘more tests more frequently’ enables teams to deliver quality code with a high assurance of stability and security.
4) Deliver Updates Faster
Continuous delivery enables faster and more frequent updates to customers. When appropriately implemented, it will help you always have a deployment-ready build artifact that has passed a standardized test process.
5) Greater Collaboration
CI/CD promotes closer team communication by enabling development, operational, management, and QA teams to collaborate on technologies, practices, and priorities.
6) Improved MTTR
Smaller code changes and quick fault isolation enabled by CI/CD practices reduce the Mean Time To Resolution (MTTR). CI/CD plays a vital role in keeping failures to a bare minimum and quickly recovering from any failures that do happen.
7) Reduced Costs
Automation in the CI/CD pipeline minimizes errors in the many repetitive steps of CI and CD. It also frees up developers’ time that could be spent on product development as there won’t be many code changes to fix since the errors are identified quickly. Moreover, increasing code quality with CI/CD also increases your ROI.
Conclusion
Adopting CI/CD practices is vital for enterprises that streamline their software delivery, enhance productivity, and maintain a competitive edge in DevOps. By integrating automation, increasing collaboration, and improving code quality, CI/CD ensures faster, more secure updates with minimal downtime, fostering a robust DevOps ecosystem.
Veritis, a Golden Bridge and Stevie Awards winner offers end-to-end CI/CD and DevOps services to secure and optimize your DevOps processes. With Veritis, your business can achieve faster deployments, reduce operational costs, and scale your development lifecycle.
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