The Birth of a Vision
We all like to engage with the people who use our products; whether we’re at customer sites, figuring out solutions for complex cases of advanced usage of our products, or meeting developers at the many conferences we visit and speak at. It’s through this deep level of engagement that we started to see patterns in the pains that our users encounter.
One day, two years ago, as we were deep in discussion about one of the companies we visited, Fred said, “Software should be liquid.” And the penny dropped.
We had all witnessed and taken an active role in the DevOps revolution. We had seen software development evolve from running discrete periodic builds to continuous integration to continuous deployment, and realized that the next logical step was… continuous updates.
The Vision Takes Form
In the years since that first lightbulb moment, we have seen how badly the software industry needs this revolution. From simple feature updates to bug fixes to security patches through to all out, widespread, global malware attacks, it is clear that all of these scenarios show the need for continuous updates. And the industry has reacted. Some of the Googles and Netflixes of the world have already orchestrated their infrastructures to implement continuous updates. But those are proprietary solutions and that’s not our vision. So, we gathered our ideas and thoughts, our expertise and experience, and are trying push the envelope to make Continuous Updates and Liquid Software a commodity.
The Vision is Now
Some have already taken the first bold steps into Liquid Software, and we are all benefiting from continuous updates that these companies provide. But like all revolutions, there is initially some resistance. There’s a conception that moving to continuous updates is a costly and lengthy process, and the industry is slow to adopt. But there’s no reason to fear this change. The ensuing benefits will far outweigh the costs of implementing continuous updates. This is why we wrote “Liquid Software.”
This book is the embodiment of our thoughts and ideas on how any organization developing software can and should achieve continuous updates. It’s the culmination of a long process of brainstorming, discussing, finessing and tweaking every last word and illustration printed on those 193 pages. If you ever wished the machines could work for us instead of the other way around, this book is for you. We hope you enjoy it.
Fred Simon
Yoav Landman
Baruch Sadogursky
