MENLO PARK, Calif., April 28, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Qubell, an innovator in automated application deployment and configuration management for web-scale applications, and Grid Dynamics, the leading provider of scalable eCommerce technology solutions, today announced the launch of the Agile Software Factory (ASF) program for Oracle ATG customers. The joint offering aims to help online retailers reduce the cycle time for developing, testing and deploying new features from months to days.  Powered by Qubell and operated by Grid Dynamics, the Agile Software Factory for ATG gives retailers a competitive edge by providing a managed infrastructure to rapidly deploy ATG environments on-demand, automatically update and test the latest changes and continuously deploy new changes to production in short iterations.  

Daily software releases are the new business imperative for retailers

For retail companies that increasingly serve consumers online, business agility has become a top strategic priority. Using technology to connect to consumers, enable personalization, manage global product delivery and operate myriads of digital services across all channels is quickly becoming essential for every retailer. All this requires a lot of new software, continuous innovation and extensive experimentation.

The key to reducing cycle times and achieving agility is to shift from infrequent "macro-releases" to a continuous stream of "micro-releases" that bring small improvements, experiments and bug fixes into the hands of the customers on a weekly, daily or even hourly basis. The annual technology upgrade before Christmas Holidays is a thing of the past. The best web companies, including Amazon, Google and Facebook, are able to push thousands of changes to their massive production infrastructures every day. Amazon's published average time between upgrades is close to 10 seconds. Traditional retailers have to accelerate their pace of innovation to compete.  

Agile Software Factory (ASF) for Oracle ATG Platform

Qubell and Grid Dynamics are both pioneers of continuous delivery and release automation with track records of successful, large-scale deployments in eCommerce accounts.  The two companies have joined forces to create an integrated technology and services offering aimed at helping enterprises that run on Oracle ATG become more agile.

At the heart of the solution is Qubell's automation platform, which allows online retailers to achieve Amazon-like agility with their current technology, infrastructure and people.

ASF for ATG comes with a starter kit that offers one-click provisioning of ATG and Endeca sandboxes for development and testing on Amazon EC2. This starter kit is designed to be easily extendable to run on different clouds or static on-premises hardware.

Grid Dynamics brings years of experience in developing ATG applications, as well as providing automated testing, deployment and operational support for ATG-powered digital commerce services. The ASF offering includes a full lifecycle approach to change management required to transform today's software operations into agile software factories. The full service offering includes:

• ASF Design Services to create architectural blueprints, technical specifications and an implementation roadmap customized to each customer.
• ASF Implementation Services to build a turn-key ASF ready for operation, including automated Continuous Integration (CI) pipeline, automated test execution, dynamic provisioning of environments, automated application deployment and production upgrades.
• ASF Managed Services to provide 24/7 support of software development, testing and deployment operations. Experienced ASF personnel will assure that customer teams continuously deliver new applications, services and features with high quality and zero downtime.

"Retailers need to compete with Amazon on speed and technology, without having Amazon's incredible cloud infrastructure or deep R&D budgets," said Samih Fadli, CTO of Grid Dynamics.  "They also can't invest years in custom automation efforts by the internal DevOps teams, like LinkedIn and Netflix. Our program is designed to give retailers the technology, best practices and expert resources to become more agile and innovative next quarter, not next year"

"Our goal is to create a 'conveyor belt' that carries changes to code, configuration and middleware through all stages of the release pipeline, continuously and automatically," said Victoria Livschitz, CEO of Qubell. "Qubell has the technology to replace weeks of manual activities and frustrating delays with one-click operations and give managers the controls over the release process and infrastructure they never had before. But without Grid Dynamics expertise, blueprints and resources, the learning curve for the customers is significant and implementation cycle can be quite long. Together, we have done this successfully for several large customers and now we are ready to make the process faster, cheaper and more repeatable."

Qubell and Grid Dynamics have plans to continue collaboration on Agile Software Factory programs for other eCommerce platforms beside Oracle ATG.

To learn more about the Agile Software Factory for Oracle ATG, visit:
http://qubell.com/agile-software-factory-oracle-atg
http://www.griddynamics.com/solutions/agile-software-factory/

About Qubell

Qubell, an innovator in application deployment and configuration management, empowers online companies to do what they have never been able to do before: put into consumers' hands innovative new features and services, almost as fast as they can conceive them, without sacrificing control, reliability or uptime. Qubell emerged from stealth in the summer of 2013 (see related press release) and announced that Kohl's completed its initial implementation (see press release). Founded by pioneers in enterprise cloud applications and services, Qubell has its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. For more information, visit qubell.com.

About Grid Dynamics

Grid Dynamics is a leading provider of open, scalable, next-generation commerce technology solutions for Tier 1 retail. Grid Dynamics has in-depth expertise in commerce technologies, wide involvement in the open source community and a modern, global workforce. Great companies, partnered with Grid Dynamics, gain a sustainable business advantage by implementing and managing solutions in the areas of omnichannel platforms, product search, and continuous delivery. To learn more about Grid Dynamics, find us at www.griddynamics.com or by following us on Twitter @GridDynamics.

SOURCE Qubell