Product Overview

Phurnace’s approach enables you to accelerate your deployments by:

• Reducing the number of configuration related defects by as much as 95%
• Reducing the time spent on installation and build scripts by as much as 90%
• Reducing the amount and complexity of installation documentation by as much as 50%
• Improving the “time to value” by delivering production-ready systems as much as 3 weeks earlier
• Improving the quality of service by knowing what’s been changed and managing the differences easily and efficiently

Typically, configuration troubleshooting and new deployments rely on manual processes, version-specific scripts, configuration templates, read-me files, emails, and recollections of random conversations captured anew each time a change is made. The people responsible for the web application servers have to process volumes of complex information, hand-edit scripts and XML files, and then, through trial and error, get the application release properly deployed and configured.

The current manual or script-based approach just isn't good enough. Not only does it waste the time of your people - but it makes it difficult to scale your business and leaves you unnecessarily exposed to risk. Phurnace believes there is a better way – the Dynamic Deployment Framework™. It defines a repeatable and consistent mechanism for successfully deploying business applications with minimal error and cost.

Every deployment is different and every situation is different. As such, there are seven key aspects to achieving dynamic deployments:

• Know environment - examine and represent a given environment either as a baseline upon which to make changes or as a way to capture payloads to be applied to other environments.
• Understand changes that will be made – contextually examine an environment and report changes that adding a new payload will make in that environment.
• Make only the changes you want – contextually apply a payload through environmentally sensitive adds/deletes/updates. In addition, define “sacred items” in an environment that are not subject to change.
• Error tolerance – roll back specific changes made in case of error, and provide sufficient logging to determine root cause.
• Flexible / extensible – not be reliant on heavy infrastructure; allow for both internal and external payload deployment.
• Verify / audit changes – provide the ability to follow up a successful deployment with audit trails and verification of payload delivery.
• Fit existing process – Fit within the current development life-cycle.

In order to realize the benefits, it is necessary to separate the mechanism or “How” to deploy, from the payload specifics or “What” to deploy, from the target or “Where” you are planning to deploy.