August 2016 Summaries

Octopus 3.4.0, a significant release from Octopus Deploy, is now available for download, accompanied by release notes detailing breaking changes. Users are encouraged to explore the new features and the development stories through the Octopus 3.4 blog series, as well as resources like the elastic and transient environments guide and the multi-tenant deployments guide available on the documentation site. A webinar titled "What's New in Octopus Deploy 3.4" is also offered to provide further insights. The release marks a milestone for the company, founded by Paul Stovell and his wife Sonia in 2012, with Paul also being an avid carpenter in his leisure time.

Octopus Deploy 3.4 introduces a significant new feature called multi-tenant deployments, which aims to enhance the deployment process by allowing multiple instances of a project to be deployed across various environments. This feature is designed to be user-friendly and can be toggled on or off, ensuring that users who do not need it will not experience any changes. Multi-tenant deployments enable several functionalities, such as first-class tenants, variable templates, tenant tag sets, and a tenant designer/preview tool, which collectively enhance the deployment experience by allowing for isolated test deployments, managing deployments for individual targets, and customizing tenant-specific settings. The feature was highly anticipated by users and allows for greater flexibility and management of projects, facilitating scenarios like deploying projects to different customers or transforming projects into SaaS applications. The new capabilities are aimed at both small teams and those managing thousands of tenants, offering tools to efficiently handle tenant selection and deployment management.

Octopus Deploy embarked on attending conferences to increase brand awareness and engage directly with developers, finding it a valuable experience despite initial uncertainties. Driven by Damo's organization, the team attended several U.S. events, including Visual Studio Live and Microsoft's Build conference, allowing them to interact with both existing and potential users. The conferences provided insights into developers' needs and deployment challenges, helping Octopus staff understand diverse development environments and how their product could fit into these. Although tiring, the experience was enriching, with staff sharing Australian treats like Tim Tams to draw attendees. This initiative was not approached as a direct sales pitch but rather as an opportunity to educate and showcase the value of Octopus, while learning from the developer community.