Software Deployment, Past, Present and Future

This paper examines the dimensions influencing the past and present and speculates on the future of software deployment. Software deployment is a post- production activity that is performed for or by the customer of a piece of software. Today´s software often consists of a large number of components each offering and requiring services of other components. Such components are often deployed into distributed, heterogeneous environments adding to the complexity of software deployment. This paper sets out a standard terminology for the various deployment activities and the entities over which they operate. Six case studies of current deployment technologies are made to illustrate various approaches to the deployment problems. The paper then examines specific deployment issues in more detail before examining some of the future directions in which the field of deployment might take.