New voke Research Shows Need for Release Management Solutions to Reduce Risk and Enable Better Business Outcomes
October 27, 2016

A focus on software quality over time-to-market indicates need for release management solutions and increased automation

San Francisco, CA, October 27, 2016 – voke, inc., a modern analyst firm focused on the edge of innovation, today announced the publication of the new Market Snapshot™ Report: Release Management.

Release management solutions provide an automated release pipeline with lifecycle traceability of all assets associated with the release so that teams know precisely what is being released.

The release management market, while not new, is made up of a crowded vendor landscape. Survey participants highlighted use of 22 unique product offerings for release management.

The new independent survey of 368 participants from both technology and non-technology companies of varying sizes globally, explores how release management solutions are used, why the technology is adopted, as well as its general perceptions, challenges, and benefits.

The demand or necessity to release more frequently elevates release management to the status of a critical technology. However, the survey found that adoption and implementation of release management solutions lag behind this demand. The survey also found that automation throughout the lifecycle, a cornerstone for successful release management, is lagging. A highlight of the survey is that organizations are identifying quality over time-to-market as the most important element of the software release.

“This survey yielded some interesting results about the market,” said Theresa Lanowitz, CEO and founder of voke. “Software teams want to release more frequently and with a higher level of confidence in the quality of the release, yet automation is lacking. This means there are still too many manual activities across the software lifecycle. The market is ripe with opportunity for organizations to do better by adopting and using release management solutions.”

The survey found that organizations taking advantage of release management solutions experience ROI in:

  • Reduced failed deployments
  • Reduced production errors
  • Increased preproduction deployments

“While it is clear that organizations are releasing software more frequently, the lack of automation and use of commercially available release management solutions is surprising,” said Lisa Dronzek COO of voke and primary author of the report. “Having an automated release pipeline with full lifecycle traceability means that manual processes must be retired to allow teams to take advantage of continuous integration and create a truly automated pipeline for release.”

The following companies are release management vendors (in alphabetical order) that were identified as either evaluated and/or adopted by participants of this survey.

  • Ansible
  • Atlassian Bamboo
  • Automic Release Automation
  • BMC Release Lifecycle Management
  • CA Release Automation
  • Chef
  • ElasticBox
  • Electric Cloud ElectricFlow
  • HPE CODAR
  • Hudson
  • IBM Urban Code
  • Jenkins
  • JetBrains TeamCity
  • Microsoft Visual Studio Release Management
  • Microsoft Visual Studio Team Services Release Management Service
  • Octopus Deploy
  • OpenMake Release Engineer
  • Plutora Release Manager
  • Puppet
  • Serena ChangeMan ZMF (now Micro Focus)
  • Serena Deployment Automation (now Micro Focus)
  • Serena Release Control (now Micro Focus)

The report also provides key assessment questions for organizations to leverage, to determine a company’s need and readiness for release management solutions.

The voke Market Snapshot Report: Release Management is available to voke’s premium subscribers and on-demand research clients at www.vokeinc.com. Media interested in obtaining a complimentary full copy of the report may contact Zenobia Godschalk,

Press Contact
Zenobia Godschalk
ZAG Communications for voke
(650) 269-8315