Release

Release Environments is a platform provided by Release Technologies that aims to enhance the software development process. According to the vendor, it offers Environments as a Service (EaaS), providing on-demand, scalable, and managed environments for development, staging, and production. This solution is designed to cater to companies of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises. Software engineers, developers, DevOps engineers, IT operations teams, product managers, and technology companies across various industries are said to benefit from the streamlined development process, improved team collaboration, reduced costs, and faster software delivery offered by Release Environments.

Key Features

Ephemeral Environments: Release Ephemeral Environments replicate production environments and can be created and removed on demand. These environments are designed to eliminate waiting time and development paralysis, enabling users to quickly create and access staging environments.

On-demand Ephemeral Staging Environments: The vendor claims that Release Environments allows users to create staging environments instantly with a single click. Users can create multiple staging environments quickly, eliminating the need for time-consuming and bottleneck-prone processes.

Unlimited QA/Validation Environments: Release Environments supports the creation of QA and validation environments for any code branch. Users can create as many isolated environments as needed, ensuring that testing and validation processes are not hindered by environment availability.

Running your Production Environments: According to the vendor, Release Environments simplifies the process of running pre-production and production environments together. Users can deploy pre-production environments and run production workloads using aligned data within a unified ecosystem.

Dev Sandbox/R&D Playground: Release Environments offers developers a sandbox environment to test ideas and experiment without concerns about time, money, and potential issues. Developers can explore and experiment in a safe environment, leveraging the power of Kubernetes and Docker.

Environments as Code: Release delivers environments-as-code through its unique Environment Template, a declarative YAML file that simplifies environment creation. Users can define context, build multiple Dockerfiles, specify services, manage hostnames, handle K8s manifests and Helm charts, deploy static frontends, run custom code, and manage workflows.

Native AWS Integration: Release Environments integrates seamlessly with AWS, allowing users to leverage native cloud resources such as Lambda, Elastic Cache, ECS, and Kinesis. Users can integrate Terraform, Pulumi, and AWS CDK within their environment creation workflows.

First-Class Customer Service: The vendor claims to offer dedicated support and guidance to users at every stage of onboarding and development. Users have access to a dedicated Slack channel operated by the DevOps team, technical solutions and guidance, Zoom calls for issue resolution, and a dedicated onboarding and integration engineer.

Deep Integration into Software Development Life Cycles: Release integrates deeply into software development life cycles by providing native support for popular tools and platforms such as GitHub, Bitbucket, Slack, and email. According to the vendor, users can easily share progress with every pull request, manage environment configuration using GitOps, and utilize the Release CLI for managing clusters and deploying environments.