Replicated: The best way to distribute your software to customers of every size in the most complex environments, including air-gap
Published: 2022-05-05 | Author: VisionariesNetwork Team
In today's digital age, software vendors are constantly looking for ways to improve the delivery and management of their applications to enterprise customers. Founded in 2015 by Grant and Marc, Replicated has emerged as a modern solution for delivering and managing multi-prem software. The company's container-based platform enables software vendors to quickly deploy cloud-native applications inside customers' environments, providing greater security and control.
At the heart of Replicated's platform is the ability to distribute software to enterprise customers of all sizes, regardless of the complexity of their environments. This is achieved through a unified platform that brings together everything needed to efficiently manage, test, install, support, and measure the distribution of an application.
The Replicated Platform is designed with a comprehensive suite of features that significantly streamline the management of software applications and enhance the overall experience for software vendors. One of the standout components of this platform is the Vendor Portal, which serves as a centralized hub for vendors to efficiently oversee their applications, manage releases, and monitor customer licenses.
This portal not only simplifies administrative tasks but also empowers vendors with valuable insights into their applications' performance. Through the Vendor Portal, vendors can access critical data regarding uptime and usage metrics, enabling them to make informed decisions and optimize their offerings. Additionally, the platform provides tailored support packages for each customer setup, ensuring that vendors can deliver personalized assistance and maintain strong relationships with their clients.
Another key feature of the Replicated Platform is the Compatibility Matrix, which plays a crucial role in the software development lifecycle. This tool is particularly beneficial for software vendors as it allows them to rigorously test their applications in environments that closely replicate their customers' setups. By integrating the Compatibility Matrix into their continuous integration (CI) processes, vendors can identify potential compatibility issues early on, thereby reducing the risk of deployment failures and enhancing the overall reliability of their applications.
The matrix offers a ready-made infrastructure that supports testing across a variety of Kubernetes distributions, versions, and configurations. This flexibility ensures that vendors can validate their applications against a wide range of environments, ultimately leading to a more robust and versatile product.
The process of using the Compatibility Matrix is straightforward. Software vendors can define their testing strategy by integrating Replicated's actions or CLI into their CI process. They can then choose combinations of distros, versions, and configurations, and set up their own smoke tests, policy tests, release tests, and canary tests on the provisioned infrastructure.
In addition to its testing capabilities, the Replicated Platform also provides a Kubernetes Installer that enables software vendors to embed Kubernetes with their application. This allows customers to install the application with a simple click-and-go operation, even in environments with VMs and bare metal hardware.
The Replicated SDK provides a way for software vendors to integrate their application with the Replicated Platform. This enables them to provide license enforcement, reporting, and update information to customers. The Customer Portal provides each customer with access-controlled instructions on how to install the latest version of the application.
Replicated's platform also offers a range of tools for troubleshooting issues within existing customer environments. The Compatibility Matrix can test across 65,981+ unique configuration combinations, giving software vendors complete confidence that their applications will run without issues in customers' unique environments.
In addition to its core features, Replicated's platform also offers integration with Helm, a popular package manager for Kubernetes. The company's Enhanced Helm solution provides a unified platform that brings together everything needed to complement Helm installs, manage app lifecycles, and embed Replicated's advanced capabilities in an application.
The Enhanced Helm solution provides a range of benefits for software vendors, including improved install success rates, accelerated support issue resolution, and greater insights into customer usage. It also enables software vendors to embed Replicated transparently in their applications, providing a fully transparent and white-labeled application lifecycle experience for customers.
Grant Miller, Founder & CEO
“We power your install options that will meet your customers’ requirements and Kubernetes comfort level (or lack thereof).”
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