Question

How is deploying a software system like moving into a house?

Answer 1

Software deployment is all of the activities that make a software system available for use.

The general deployment process consists of several interrelated activities with possible transitions between them. These activities can occur at the producer side or at the consumer side or both. Because every software system is unique, the precise processes or procedures within each activity can hardly be defined. Therefore, "deployment" should be interpreted as a general process that has to be customized according to specific requirements or characteristics.

When computers were extremely large, expensive, and bulky (mainframes and minicomputers), the software was often bundled together with the hardware by manufacturers. If business software needed to be installed on an existing computer, this might require an expensive, time-consuming visit by a systems architect or a consultant. For complex, on-premises installation of enterprise software today, this can still sometimes be the case.

However, with the development of mass market software for the new age of microcomputers in the 1980s came new forms of software distribution – first cartridges, then Compact Cassettes, then floppy disks, then (in the 1990s and later) optical media, the internet and flash drives. This meant that software deployment could be left to the customer. However, it was also increasingly recognized over time that configuration of the software by the customer was important and that this should ideally have a user-friendly interface.

Installation and activation

For simple systems, installation involves establishing some form of command, shortcut, script or service for executing the software (manually or automatically). For complex systems it may involve configuration of the system – possibly by asking the end user questions about its intended use, or directly asking them how they would like it to be configured – and/or making all the required subsystems ready to use.

Deactivation

Deactivation is the inverse of activation, and refers to shutting down any already-executing components of a system. Deactivation is often required to perform other deployment activities, e.g., a software system may need to be deactivated before an update can be performed. The practice of removing infrequently used or obsolete systems from service is often referred to as application retirement or application decommissioning.
Uninstallation
Uninstallation is the inverse of installation. It is the removal of a system that is no longer required. It may also involve some reconfiguration of other software systems in order to remove the uninstalled system's dependencies.

Update

The update process replaces an earlier version of all or part of a software system with a newer release. It commonly consists of deactivation followed by installation. On some systems, such as on Linux when using the system's package manager, the old version of a software application is typically also uninstalled as an automatic part of the process.

Deployment Roles:

The complexity and variability of software products have fostered the emergence of specialized roles for coordinating and engineering the deployment process. For desktop systems, end-users frequently also become the "software deployers" when they install a software package on their machine. The deployment of enterprise software involves many more roles, and those roles typically change as the application progresses from the test (pre-production) to production environments. Typical roles involved in software deployments for enterprise applications may include:

in pre-production environments:
application developers: see Software development process
build-and-release engineers: see Release engineering
release managers: see Release management
deployment coordinators: see Develops in production environments:
system administrator
database administrator
release coordinators: see Develops operations project managers: see Information Technology Infrastructure Library.