rPath, an innovator in automating system provisioning and maintenance, today announced “Achieving Visible Ops with Intelligent System Automation,” a free white paper that offers a practical approach to intelligently automating Visible Ops release and change processes to transform and accelerate IT, reduce cost and mitigate risk. “Achieving Visible Ops with Intelligent System Automation” is available now as a free download at http://bit.ly/a2tR35. The white paper will also be featured in “DevOps, The Visible Ops and Other Emerging Practices for High-Velocity, Low-Cost IT,” the April 15 webinar featuring the co-author of The Visible Ops Handbook and thought leaders from DTO Solutions/Dev2Ops.org and rPath. Register for the free webinar at http://bit.ly/cpiS8L.

“IT organizations are facing a perfect storm of system scale, accelerating change, and an increasing need for speed,” said Jake Sorofman, chief marketing officer for rPath. “Most IT organizations understand that they must transform to become leaner and more responsive service providers. Leading this transformation is a passionate and innovative group of IT practitioners galvanized by the DevOps movement and The Visible Ops Handbook. rPath shares a common vision and way to automate these best practices to achieve truly high-velocity and low-cost IT.”

Overview of “Achieving Visible Ops”

The crisis facing modern IT reflects the challenges posed by virtualization, cloud and other large-scale environments—which are exacerbated by contracting budgets and “lean,” do-more-with-less mandates. As a consequence, IT is under pressure to transform by way of automation.

Resources like The Visible Ops Handbook have already addressed two fundamental issues: (1) how to implement a process framework such as ITIL; and (2) where to start. Now, “Achieving Visible Ops with Intelligent System Automation” addresses two equally important and fundamental issues: (1) how to implement ITIL principles without the bloat and bureaucracy often associated with this approach; and (2) how to automate for speed and control.

In addition to a brief summary of the Visible Ops methodology, “Achieving Visible Ops with Intelligent System Automation” covers the following topics:

• Intelligent System Automation: Making Visible Ops a Reality – Discusses the deep system modeling and system version control technologies required for the intelligent automation of Visible Ops.
• Phase One: Stabilize Patient, Modify First Response – Focuses on (1) reducing the number of system outages by freezing change outside scheduled maintenance windows; and (2) ensuring problem managers have all information about changes that could have caused an outage.
• Phase Two: Catch & Release and Find Fragile Artifacts – Discusses identifying and analyzing the critical elements of production infrastructure and the interdependencies between components that make up that infrastructure.
• Phase Three: Establish Repeatable Build Library – Covers (1) creation and maintenance of a versioned definitive software library (DSL) for all software and patches; and (2) ensuring perfect configuration synchronization between pre-production and production systems.
• Phase Four: Enable Continuous Improvement – Shows how to implement metrics to allow continuous improvement of release, control and resolution processes covered in previous phases.
• Preparing for Audits with rPath – Covers reporting capabilities that help answer key questions about the state of deployed systems, helping to take the time, cost and risk out of audit preparations.

The upcoming webinar, “DevOps, The Visible Ops and Other Emerging Practices for High-Velocity, Low-Cost IT,” will be held Thursday, April 15, 2010, at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time (2:00 p.m. Eastern Time). The webinar will feature Damon Edwards, president of DTO Solutions and editor of Dev2Ops.org; Kevin Behr, co-author of The Visible Ops Handbook; and Erik Troan, founder and CTO of rPath. All registrants will receive a copy of the whitepaper, “Achieving Visible Ops with Intelligent System Automation.” The first 25 registrants will receive a copy of “The Visible Ops Handbook.” To register for the free webinar, please visit http://bit.ly/cpiS8L.

For more information on rPath, please visit http://www.rpath.com. For additional perspectives, please visit and subscribe to rPath RSS blog feeds at http://blogs.rpath.com/wpmu/. Follow rPath on Twitter at @rpath.