The Issue ...

Software Configuration Management guarantees the referencing of software components and tracking of version levels. Yet in order to reap the full benefits of automation, the deployment phase also needs to be automated.
All too often, companies look to other tools to cover this phase, overlooking the need for real interoperability between the two activities.

The ARCAD Answer...

Thanks to its highly integrated approach, the ARCAD-Skipper suite guarantees a strong bond between the version control of development and of production. It is the same entity that is manipulated on both sides, guaranteeing perfect coordination between the development and production departments.
Furthermore, ARCAD-Skipper is able to fully manage multi-platform configurations, deploying programs and files in System i libraries at the same time as executables, DLLs or any other file on UNIX/Linux or Windows. Its major strength is that both the native and heterogeneous components are managed within a single process.
To guarantee the security of these automations, ARCAD provides powerful rollback functions. This way, if an error occurs during the installation of any of these components, the operation can be cancelled and the previous state of components restored, whatever the host platform.
To obtain 100% automation is all customer contexts, ARCAD relies on its own internal macro-language. This enables all default processes supplied with the product to be easily customized, both on native System i and on heterogeneous platforms. For this, ARCAD uses ANT technology (ant.apache.org).
All logs are centralized on a single server to facilitate piloting and control. This log information is provided at a physical level (which component has been installed? On which server? By who? When? etc.), and also at the logical level (which application version is installed on which site?).
ARCAD-Skipper can transport all native and UNIX/Linux or Windows components together. The installation on the remote servers automatically creates subdirectories identical to those in the reference environment.

List of Features

• Dispatch of complete applications, cumulatives or PTFs,
• Specific dispatch (list of objects or sources),
• Version level by site/application,
• Log of versions dispatched,
• Automatic reception confirmation,
• Dispatch by TCP/IP, SNADS,
• Dispatch by internet as emails,
• Dispatch in magnetic media format,
• Automatic reception handling on remote site,
• Log of actions on components,
• Log of executed commands,
• Error log with associated messages,
• Configuration of dispatches (time, jobq, etc.),
• Send/execution of remote commands,
• Customization of rollback processes,
• Multi-environment support on remote sites,
• Tracking tool for ongoing dispatches/receptions
• Automatic rollback