As the number of connected devices increase, the operations and infrastructure needed to support continuous updates at scale is growing fast. Deploying to a large fleet of connected devices in the field with thousands or tens of thousands, can pose a significant risk of something going wrong.
Regardless of how well tested the software and update process is, you will only know how well the deployment works after it has been released into the field. Differences in time zones, network latency, hardware and customer usage patterns are all potential stumbling blocks preventing new software releases from behaving as expected. These factors can be impossible to predict. A failed update will result in negative customer experience and potentially high customer support costs. Worst case, collateral and brand damage might be at stake.
With the release of Mender Enterprise, feature such as phased rollout can help greatly mitigate the risk by deploying into time-delayed phases with customizable share of the devices being updated in each phase. Additionally, schedule deployments enable to set a start time for the deployment into the future, so customers are unlikely to be interrupted by the update, and your support staff does not need to be up at night to create and observe it.
Watch this video to learn more about the features: