Software engineering has been mainly focusing on software development ever since its conceptual inception. Over the years, the growing understanding of software development has powered work on Software Configuration Management (SCM) tools. Software deployment is an emerging research field of SCM, which encompasses the post-development activities of a software product. In the past, software deployment largely confined itself to the installation of a software system. Very few research works dealt with the delivery, installation and maintenance of applications after development. For various reasons like complexity, incompatibility, etc., application deployment was done in an unplanned and very poorly mechanized way. So the scope of software deployment in itself is broad and encompasses all of the activities that are performed after a software system is developed. This paper attempts to highlight the need to develop new configuration management technologies that automate the activities required for continuous support of deployed systems.
Software engineering has been mainly focusing on software development ever since its conceptual inception. However, over the years there is a growing interest in configuration management, which is often supported by specialized programs called Software Configuration Management (SCM) tools (David A Wheeler, 2004). Software deployment is an emerging research field of SCM which encompasses the post-development activities of a software product. Very few research works have dealt with the delivery, installation and maintenance of applications after development. For various reasons like complexity, and incompatibility, application deployment was done in an unplanned and very poorly mechanized way. This is a subject of great interest in the software industry. Software or application deployment is a complex process which includes all the activities that need to be performed from the development end on the producer sites to the actual installation and maintenance of the application on consumer computers. So the scope of software deployment in itself is broad and encompasses all the activities that are performed after a software system is developed. The basic purpose of software deployment is to assemble a usable configuration of a given software system on a consumer's site. Also, it must maintain the integrity of the deployed software system's configuration in the face of changes to its environment from both the producer and the consumer sides.
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