Binging the Environment
I’m beginning research on the best practices for building software environments, from development environments through QA to preprod and production. We need a consistent, reliable and documented methodology for implementing environments throughout the enterprise. Surprisingly, my initial search hasn’t generated a plethora of hits. This has to be a problem everywhere.
I started my search simply: “Building software environments”. The results could have been one of those Bing commercials where search terms lead to all kinds of irrelevant results. And yes, I used Bing. Early results were, in baseball parlance, a no decision. Google performed no better. To rid myself of the hits relating to software environments for building buildings, I add to the search terms: “building software development qa production environments”.
Now it really looks like a Bing commercial. I’m not looking for a QA Engineer position with LegalZoom.
Of course building software environments falls under the purview of Software Configuration Management, and the Wikipedia article on SCM references “Environment management – Managing the software and hardware that host our system.” Unfortunately, unlike Build management or Process management, there is no article specifically on the topic of Environment management.
Binging (and isn’t that why they really called it Bing, to co-opt Googling) “Environment management software” shows me where I can buy green software. And profile and user management. And, naturally, the Wikipedia page for Environmental Management.
Bing!
