Fast deployment of code is a major advantage in business. With so much competition, a multitude of platforms and services, and an enormous number of users connecting and using smartphones and other mobile devices, it is an opportunity to scale up and reach a wider audience. When you have a seamless and efficient way to deploy code, it means the business gets a boost and thrives in ways that encumbered processes don’t allow.
Think of a small company just starting out with a new social media app, one that intends to take on TikTok and capture a younger audience. There might be multiple services, servers in various locations, an on-premise IT infrastructure that is tricky to maintain -- in short, it’s not so easy. While the idea might be sound and the business requirements are clear, it is hard to deploy the code on servers where it can run reliably and where version control is not a Herculean task.
AWS CodeDeploy is a way to solve that problem, allowing companies to deploy apps on an infrastructure that runs using cloud services or in an on-premise facility in a way that is much easier. The goal with any new app, including a TikTok competitor, is to focus more on what the app can do and accomplish for the user, even if it’s watching short, entertaining videos. It’s not in trying to deploy the app so it is available for end-users at all times and runs reliably.
CodeDeploy can help you deploy apps on Amazon EC2, AWS Fargate, AWS Lambda, or your on-premise infrastructure. To understand what CodeDeploy does, it’s important to briefly cover what each of those services from Amazon do and how they help your company.
ECS (Elastic Compute Cloud) is a well-known infrastructure for running virtual servers in the cloud. It’s a way to rent the compute power you need to run applications that are reliable, available, and secure. AWS Fargate is a serverless compute engine that handles the compute resources you need and can scale according to your needs. AWS Lambda is an event-driven, serverless infrastructure that only deploys apps and services when they are needed.
Companies that have an on-premise infrastructure can also use CodeDeploy. As you scale your own data center and servers, the service can also scale with you.
Benefits of using AWS CodeDeploy
Developers tend to become overloaded because of the burden they face creating and maintaining business apps, but also because they are then tasked with the complexity of deployment. This can involve making sure the version control tracking is current, that revisions are tracked adequately, that the infrastructure itself can support the instances of the app, and even making sure the app is available and runs reliably for all users. They become not just developers, but also deployment and infrastructure specialists.
CodeDeploy has one major advantage in that it helps remove some of the complexity and maintenance required to deploy apps onto servers and in the infrastructure. Developers become more likely to quickly deploy new features, services, and updates. They don’t have to worry as much about reliable operation. They can focus on building the actual app.
One example of this is when it comes to minimizing downtime. During the deployment process and when apps are running in the cloud infrastructure or within your on-premise environment, CodeDeploy can track and monitor errors. Developers set rules for how the application is deployed and what happens when there are faults detected.
What’s so brilliant about this is that developers don’t have to do any of these deployments -- for a multitude of apps and services within the apps -- using what is traditionally a manual and cumbersome process. Imagine having the ability to essentially pull a switch and know that an app will be deployed across the infrastructure and be available to all users on a variety of devices, in multiple locations around the globe, and without a versioning or provisioning issue.
Thinking back to the example of the small company creating a new competitor to TikTok, the main advantage is that there’s less of a focus on deploying the app and more of a focus on what the app can do, who is able to use it, and adding new features requested. This makes a small company more competitive in the marketplace, but also helps companies of any size improve the feature-set, reliability, security, and usefulness of all apps in their portfolio.
All of this is integrated with your current software development process and the Amazon services you already use, and from one main management console instead of multiple ad hoc methods or relying on a manual, disparate process. In the end, it’s a seamless way to deploy apps that you want to bring to the market quickly and efficiently, or for apps that are in high demand and that you are continuously updating and improving over time.
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