Continuous Integration

Continuous integration is a software development practice where developers frequently merge their code changes into a central repository. After these changes are submitted, automated builds and tests are conducted. The primary goals of continuous integration are to identify and fix bugs more quickly, enhance software quality, and speed up the process of validating and releasing new software updates.

Continuous Delivery

Continuous delivery is a software development approach in which code changes are automatically built, tested, and prepared for release into production. It builds on continuous integration by deploying all code changes to testing and production environments after they have been built. When continuous delivery is implemented effectively, developers always have a deployment-ready build artifact that has successfully passed a standardized testing process.

Microservices

The microservices architecture is a design approach for building a single application as a collection of small services. Each service operates in its own process and communicates with others through a well-defined interface, typically utilizing a lightweight mechanism like an HTTP-based application programming interface (API). Microservices are organized around specific business capabilities, with each service focused on a single purpose. You can employ various frameworks or programming languages to develop microservices, allowing them to be deployed independently, whether as individual services or as a group.

Infrastructure as Code

Infrastructure as code is a practice that allows for the provisioning and management of infrastructure using code and software development techniques, such as version control and continuous integration. The cloud's API-driven model enables developers and system administrators to interact with infrastructure programmatically and at scale, rather than setting up and configuring resources manually. This means engineers can use code-based tools to manage infrastructure in much the same way they handle application code. Since infrastructure and servers are defined by code, they can be quickly deployed using standardized patterns, updated with the latest patches and versions, or duplicated in a repeatable manner.