Guide-Rails: Reinventing the Software Delivery Process
Eric Billingsley, CEOSome companies have developed their own software development platform to solve this problem, but very few are successful in this effort. Now there’s a path for faster software development process with the Guide-Rails platform. It automates, standardizes, and secures software development by combining clients’ choice of tools and clouds with the platform to create better quality software faster and with more time for innovation. “They (firms) can get out of the business of having to build their own development platforms, and just buy it. Our clients can focus their engineering talent on driving differentiation for their own customers and not spend it messing around with tools,” says Eric Billingsley, CEO of Guide-Rails.
Businesses of all sizes can use this revolutionary technology to prevent errors, improve software supply chain security and expedite their software development transformation. Guide-Rails combines continuous integration, security scanning, compliance, deployments, operational monitoring and the sharing of data into a single system. Software developers benefit from having self-service pipelines that run automatically with complexity removed, plus easy access to information they need from an elegant user interface. The platform enables developers to perform iterative software development where small batches of code are deployed frequently into production, a recipe for innovation.
A Comprehensive Collaboration and Coding Platform
Moving code to the Guide-Rails platform can be done quickly, enabling a vast improvement for the software development process. The standard strategy is for a client to select one or two applications to onboard, then choose which tools to integrate. Within a few hours a customer can then launch applications into one of the major clouds, VMware or Kubernetes. As several clients are regulated firms, the solution can be implemented behind a firewall in a virtual private cloud plus a SaaS version is in limited beta if this extra security layer isn’t needed.
One unique benefit from using Guide- Rails is to shift integration testing left, which is frequently a major bottleneck in the process with a cycle time of weeks. Dependencies are shared with tests and test data in the platform, which then automatically creates ephemeral testing environments to run the integration tests. Once the testing is complete, the environment is automatically torn down and the results are immediately sent to the developer.
Reducing this cycle time from weeks to minutes allows developers to stay focused on the project at hand, driving speed and quality at the same time for complex applications.
Along with easy access to the test results, the platform unlocks the data that is often difficult to obtain. The different tools are integrated into the platform and combined within the platform, resulting in actionable insights and data for a variety of uses. From quality and DORA metrics for improvement purposes to source code/library/dependency changes for quick issue resolution, team members are more efficient and have information for improvement.
One of the biggest differentiators is how several executives and developers at Guide-Rails have DevOps experience from large organizations like Gap, Apple, Google and eBay. This experience of performing high velocity software engineering in extremely complex environments is critical for teams of 200+ developers. The platform provides high value for individual teams, but truly shines when scaling out to a large development organization.
In line with meeting the needs for large development teams, Guide-Rails was designed from the ground up with a focus on the security and compliance aspects of software development. The result is a combination of built in and managed open-source, integrations with security tools and platform capabilities that operate together as a coordinated system. Experts agree that “bolt-on” security and compliance capabilities are not effective, Guide-Rails has taken the preferred approach of providing a foundation.
Keeping Development Continuous
Their largest client today is a European bank who was able to speed up their onboarding process for new applications to get into full CI/CD from about a year down to three days, a massive improvement for new projects. This bank has also seen delivery speed change to get features out to clients improve from three to six months down to under a day for small changes. These result in millions of dollars of savings in engineering costs.
The platform is also used internally at Guide-Rails by Guide-Rails development team for continued development, which results in quick turnaround time for client requests. There are several improvements on the roadmap for the platform such as UI changes to speed up onboarding and additional metrics for value stream management. By working closely with clients to understand what improvements make sense, the platform will provide clients increasing value over time.
Guide-Rails intends to make a full SaaS version available by the end of the year, which will make it easy for firms of all sizes to become software innovators.
One of the biggest differentiators is how several executives and developers at Guide-Rails have DevOps experience from large organizations like Gap, Apple, Google and eBay. This experience of performing high velocity software engineering in extremely complex environments is critical for teams of 200+ developers. The platform provides high value for individual teams, but truly shines when scaling out to a large development organization.
Our clients can focus their engineering talent on driving differentiation for their own customers and not spend it messing around with tools
In line with meeting the needs for large development teams, Guide-Rails was designed from the ground up with a focus on the security and compliance aspects of software development. The result is a combination of built in and managed open-source, integrations with security tools and platform capabilities that operate together as a coordinated system. Experts agree that “bolt-on” security and compliance capabilities are not effective, Guide-Rails has taken the preferred approach of providing a foundation.
Keeping Development Continuous
Their largest client today is a European bank who was able to speed up their onboarding process for new applications to get into full CI/CD from about a year down to three days, a massive improvement for new projects. This bank has also seen delivery speed change to get features out to clients improve from three to six months down to under a day for small changes. These result in millions of dollars of savings in engineering costs.
The platform is also used internally at Guide-Rails by Guide-Rails development team for continued development, which results in quick turnaround time for client requests. There are several improvements on the roadmap for the platform such as UI changes to speed up onboarding and additional metrics for value stream management. By working closely with clients to understand what improvements make sense, the platform will provide clients increasing value over time.
Guide-Rails intends to make a full SaaS version available by the end of the year, which will make it easy for firms of all sizes to become software innovators.
Company
Guide-Rails
Headquarters
Santa Clara, CA
Management
Eric Billingsley, CEO
Description
Guide-Rails is a comprehensive software development platform that accelerates, standardizes, and scales software delivery across an enterprise.Businesses of all sizes can use this revolutionary technology to prevent errors, improve software supply chain security and expedite their software development transformation. Guide-Rails combines continuous integration, security scanning, compliance, deployments, operational monitoring and the sharing of data into a single system.Software developers benefit from having self-service pipelines that run automatically with complexity removed, plus easy access to information they need from an elegant user interface. The platform enables developers to perform iterative software development where small batches of code are deployed frequently into production, a recipe for innovation.
