Compare To Continuous Deployment
Overview
Continuous deployment tools like CircleCI, OctopusDeploy, and GitHub Actions streamline software delivery by automating the release pipeline. However, for vendors serving regulated industries or handling sensitive customer data, these tools often fall short in environments that require customer control over change management or where connectivity is limited. Tensor9 is designed to complement your existing continuous deployment tools while respecting customer-driven processes, enabling you to maintain a seamless developer experience without compromising customer requirements.
TL;DR
Traditional continuous deployment tools push updates directly to the cloud but don’t address customer-managed environments. Tensor9 complements existing CD tools by enabling vendors to deploy seamlessly to customer environments while giving customers full control over change management.
How Tensor9 Complements Continuous Deployment
Instead of replacing your continuous deployment pipeline, Tensor9 enhances it by:
- Preserving Your Deployment Workflow: Tensor9 integrates seamlessly with popular CI/CD tools, acting as the final step in the pipeline to package updates for customer environments.
- Automating Service Replacement: During the deployment process, Tensor9 automatically replaces cloud-managed services (e.g., S3 → MinIO, DynamoDB → ScyllaDB), making the deployment environment-agnostic.
- Supporting Form Factor Flexibility: Tensor9 ensures that updates can reach not only connected environments but also air-gapped or disconnected systems.
- Customer-Controlled Change Management: While continuous deployment tools push updates automatically, Tensor9 allows customers to review, approve, and apply changes in a way that aligns with their internal compliance policies.
- Audit-Logged Debugging and Support: Tensor9 offers supervised and semi-supervised remote access for secure troubleshooting, giving customers full visibility and control during issue resolution.
Comparison: Continuous Deployment Tools with and without Tensor9
| Category | Continuous Deployment | Continuous Deployment + Tensor9 |
|---|---|---|
| Integration | Vendor integrates directly with customer environment. | Tensor9 acts as a complementary layer, packaging deployments for customer-specific environments. |
| Managed Service Compatibility | Requires custom engineering to replace cloud services. | Automatically replaces cloud services (e.g., S3 → MinIO, Redis → Redis OSS). |
| Customer Control | Updates are automatically pushed to customer systems. | Customers can review and approve updates before applying them, ensuring compliance. |
| Air-Gapped Environments | Unsupported or requires manual processes. | Fully supported through offline packaging and update workflows. |
| Observability | Vendor-driven telemetry sent to cloud dashboards. | Observability through digital twins, with only customer-approved telemetry shared. |
| Form Factor Support | Limited to cloud-based and connected private clouds. | Supports all customer environments: public cloud, private cloud, on-prem, and air-gapped systems. |
| Deployment Complexity | May require separate pipelines for different environments. | Single deployment process with automatic adjustments for any form factor. |
| Troubleshooting Support | Requires remote access and elevated privileges. | Secure remote debugging with customer-controlled access and audit logs. |
Why Tensor9 Complements Continuous Deployment Tools
- Flexibility for Regulated Customers: Customers in regulated industries often require manual approval and audit trails for software updates. Tensor9 provides this flexibility without disrupting your continuous deployment process.
- Reduced Engineering Effort: Tensor9 automates the service replacement and environment configuration steps that usually require significant engineering effort when deploying outside public cloud environments.
- Unified Deployment Pipeline: With Tensor9, vendors can use a single continuous deployment pipeline for all customer environments, including BYOC, on-prem, and air-gapped systems.
- Enhanced Resilience: Continuous deployment pipelines can break when updates hit incompatible customer environments. Tensor9 mitigates this by adapting deployments to customer-specific constraints and infrastructure.
- Preservation of Developer Experience: Tensor9 extends, rather than replaces, your CI/CD tools, ensuring your development team can continue using familiar workflows.
Summary
Tensor9 enhances traditional continuous deployment pipelines by extending them to support diverse customer environments, empowering vendors to deliver updates seamlessly while respecting customer control over change management. Whether you’re deploying to AWS, private clouds, or fully air-gapped data centers, Tensor9 ensures that your updates are compatible, secure, and compliant—without disrupting your existing CI/CD processes.
Updated 11 days ago