The battles and revolutions being fought in the Games of Thrones fantasy drama echo the changes taking place in software development. Choice, and the freedom to choose any tool, are the new battleground, as Chris Boorman, Chief Marketing Officer, Automic explains.

The revolutions taking place in Game of Thrones have more in common with what’s happening in development than you might think.

George R.R. Marti’s epic fantasy drama set on the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos chronicles the conflict among competing claimants for succession to the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms. There are attempts to reclaim the throne by the realm’s deposed ruling dynasty. Game of Thrones also spans the threat of the impending winter and the legendary creatures and fierce peoples of the North. Revolutions and battles abound.

A similar revolution is taking place in development. It’s a new world, where battles over new tools are being fought over in the enterprise and won. Millennials – the population born between 1980 and 2000 with different priorities to previous generations – are now crowding the development space. They no longer want to be tied to the old world of structured toolsets from legacy vendors. They want to freedom to choose their own toolsets to develop code.

That includes open source, for example, which his fast-becoming an engine for innovation. Indeed, last year’s annual open source survey found that 67% of organisations report actively encouraging developers to engage in and contribute to open source projects.

Gone are the days when legacy vendors can force developers to use a particular type of tooling. Choice is the new watchword. Emerging toolsets deliver the pace, agility and continuous delivery organisations are crying out for. No company should be forced to wear a straightjacket made up of proprietary development styles and narrow toolsets. Instead, developers should be empowered to leverage whatever tools they prefer to use and drop their new components directly into their continuous delivery pipeline.

After all, to achieve the best end results – agile delivery and high quality apps that meet the needs of the business – your developers need freedom of choice.

The revolutions chronicled in Game of Thrones are not without their setbacks though. And the same is true of development. In the rush to innovate, many organisations can experience tool chain sprawl and disparate islands of automation, while the back-office applications continue with slow yet reliable version rollouts.

The key requirement is to link these approaches by adding agility and speed to traditional application delivery, and reliability, compliance and scale to the innovative digital applications.

Automation scales continuous delivery

In this development revolution we are witnessing a rush towards scalable release automation technologies that deliver that choice. A proactive, comprehensive and dynamic automation strategy support multiple scrum methodologies and enable enterprises to scale their continuous delivery across both back-office applications and the new digital front-office. Automation introduces speed and agility, alongside reliability and control to enable the modern agile enterprise.

Using a release automation solution, for example, your development and operations teams are able to automate the deployment pipeline from development to production across all environments in order to promote and reject versions, enact automatic rollback of changes when needed, and monitor environments from a single platform.

Your teams can also capitalise on the knowledge in automation development communities such as the Automic Marketplace. Whenever an open source developer creates new components, they can be shared with the community. Clicking on it just now, for instance, I immediately came across a Jenkins Action Pack that enables you to trigger a new build in Jenkins from Automic Release AutomationThe Jenkins Action Pack enables you to trigger a new build in Jenkins from Automic Release Automation.The Jenkins Action Pack enables you to trigger a new build in Jenkins from Automic Release Automation.

Automation also enhances the culture of your development team. The adoption of a consistent, repeatable deployment process helps your teams work as one. Application enhancements can be developed, tested and implemented in a secure and managed manner across environments, including production. Ultimately, IT ends up supporting the needs of the business more directly.

A revolution is taking place in development. Maybe not on the epic and bloody scale of Games of Thrones, but is will certainly determine how quickly organisations adapt to digital transformation.

Edited for web by Cecilia Rehn.