Changes to xMatters On-Demand deployment process

Here at xMatters, we pride ourselves on being able to adapt quickly and provide timely service updates across the cloud. Whether it's an updated voice network, a security alert, or any other time-sensitive context, the xMatters On-Demand service is highly agile and responsive to change.

We've been providing twice-weekly updates to the On-Demand service for quite a while - more than two years in fact, but recent improvements to our internal automated processes mean we can now deliver updates and address customer issues even faster.

Faster, better, stronger

To help balance an acceptable level of visibility into upcoming changes for customers who need it, while simultaneously delivering fixes and updates as quickly as possible, we're announcing some changes to our On-Demand deployment process.

• Bug fixes and feature enhancements: Instead of sitting on changes until the next regularly scheduled release, we're going to roll out bug fixes, performance enhancements, and usability improvements as soon as they are ready for production release. Most of these changes are simple corrections or updates to existing features, which rarely affect product behavior.
• Features and major releases: Our quarterly releases include all of the main product updates and changes from our last few months of work, and we'll continue to pack them full of features. And we'll continue to enable the quarterly releases in non-production environments two weeks before the features hit production to give you plenty of time to bring yourself and your users up-to-speed on the changes.
• Communication changes: We've heard from several sources that the updates from our status page about upcoming/scheduled/in progress releases have been a little overwhelming. So starting with our upcoming Frogger release cycle, we'll save those notifications for service disruptions involving the xMatters service, or when we have a major quarterly release coming out (like Enduro!) that we want to make sure you know about ahead of time.

We'll still provide details about all of the changes, of course - we know clients like to know when we fix or update something that affects them, but we'll post our support notes and development highlights as a round-up of everything we've done at the end of each week instead. And you can still subscribe to the latest support notes and development highlights page if you want to stay informed about all of the changes that happened during the week.

Overview of the process

For a complete overview of the xMatters On-Demand deployment process and information about our Early Access Program, check out the official guide.

We're excited to be able to offer increased responsiveness and even more of the features you expect from xMatters On-Demand.

Sincerely,

xMatters Product Management