Understanding Continuous Deployment

In the past, developers would determine and implement all the features for a program before deploying it to users. The problem with this approach was that it often took companies months or even years to add new features to their solutions. Today, developers instead use a technique called continuous integration to deploy features to a solution as the features are complete and tested, reducing the time required to system updates to weeks, or in some cases, days.

Before developers release their system updates, they must thoroughly test their new features. To do so, developers will often create a second site, called a sandbox, that behaves similar to the production system. Using the sandbox, developers can ensure that the new features work and do not break other parts of the solution. Using the cloud, developers can quickly spin up the sandbox environment.