Today, CliQr, the leading application-defined cloud management platform provider, introduces new CloudCenter features that help developer and operations (DevOps) teams simplify and streamline deployment of any application to any data center, public or private cloud. Its unique, integrated continuous integration / continuous delivery (CI/CD) Project Board unifies the management of users, deployments and environments across multiple pipeline phases -- from development, test and quality assurance (QA) to staging and production.

"True CI/CD can only be achieved with automation, but -- until now -- continuous deployment across multiple environments has been problematic," says Tenry Fu, co-founder and CTO of CliQr. "CliQr's new CloudCenter update marks an industry milestone as the first cloud management platform to integrate end-to-end project management with underlying infrastructure and application deployment automation. New features help DevOps teams automate and standardize deployment in any data center or cloud environment and visualize and manage each project's end-to-end process that crosses those environments."

CloudCenter 4.2 Streamlines Application Development Projects

Managing development projects in an enterprise environment often includes tracking multiple deployments across multiple pipeline phases and user teams. DevOps must deploy the latest build with high degrees of standardization, often in multiple data center and cloud environments. To meet these needs, CloudCenter's application-defined cloud management platform securely provisions infrastructure resources and deploys application components to more than 15 data center, private and public cloud environments. CliQr designed CloudCenter 4.2 with several new features, including:

• Project Board - This new CloudCenter tab delivers a user interface (UI) where developers and the project manager can see the health and status of deployments at each development lifecycle phase and then take action. 
  
  
• Project Definitions - CloudCenter enables project managers to set lifecycle phases, link to cloud accounts, add users and then launch projects with defined budgets and built-in cost controls. 
  
  
• Visual Promotion - Users can simply promote deployments from one phase to another across cloud environments. No detailed knowledge of underlying automation or cloud services is required. 
  
  
• Improved Toolchain Integration - CloudCenter 4.2 includes a variety of updates that support more automated DevOps processes, including an updated Jenkins plugin, updated ability to model Chef and Puppet nodes as part of a CloudCenter Application Profile and new support for artifact repositories S3, Artifactory, Chef, and Puppet. The update also includes support for SoftLayer bare metal provisioning and the Bracket Computing cloud.

"Cloud computing requires developers and operations professionals to team together to introduce and maintain applications throughout their lifecycles, but each group doesn't speak the other's language," says Holger Mueller, VP and Principal Analyst of Constellation Research. "At Constellation Research, we have found the market is ripe for cloud application management platforms that automate application deployment and management so that DevOps teams don't need to know each other's language to work together effectively and efficiently."

New CloudCenter Features Amplify Benefits of Cloud Computing

CloudCenter 4.2 extends the range of benefits the platform offers in speeding and simplifying application deployment and management, including:

• Faster Projects - One platform manages project setup, project execution and integrated application and infrastructure deployment automation across all phases of the CI/CD pipeline. It gives project managers complete transparency of overall project flow, current health and status, as well as control and reporting against allocated budget. 
  
  
• Improved Efficiency - DevOps professionals can save time and reduce variability -- a common source of wasted effort for development and production personnel -- by using a single solution for both project management and automated deployment of both pre-production and production environments. CloudCenter's portable and cloud-agnostic solution eliminates cloud lock-in and hard coding of the deployment automation to the cloud infrastructure, and it reduces the number of version-controlled artifacts that must be maintained. 
  
  
• Simplified Project Execution - CloudCenter enables project managers to gain centralized visibility and control without hopping between multiple tool UIs or needing a deep knowledge of underlying clouds or automation tools. Similarly, developers can focus on development rather than learning yet another user interface. Finally, DevOps engineers can develop and maintain integration between various tools while enjoying governance features, role-based access control (RBAC), centralized cost / usage controls and reporting / status alerts that are not typically included with single-purpose toolchain solutions.

Pricing and Availability
CloudCenter 4.2 is currently generally available via multi-tenant SaaS or traditional, dedicated deployment. CloudCenter does not use feature-based tiered pricing, so customers always receive all new features at no additional cost.