Continuous Integration and Delivery in the Cloud

Amazon makes changes to its production environment every 11.6 seconds. Facebook's site gets changes at least a couple of times every day.

Back in the old days of software development, releases at this cadence were unthinkable. Development companies were organized around scheduled releases that happened every few weeks, months, or even years. But the older style of development doesn't fill well with the pace of modern life or with modern development workflows, especially for web services and application developers.

We now have the tools, and the infrastructure to commit, test, and deliver changes within a very short timeframe, which is great for businesses and for the users who get improved products almost immediately.

At the heart of his ability to safely deliver software with fast incremental releases is continuous integration coupled with continuous delivery — distinct processes which are often conflated, but which aren't necessarily tied together.