September 2023 Summaries

Supporting software in customer-managed environments presents significant challenges, as evidenced by a study commissioned by Replicated, which highlights the difficulty of resolving support issues efficiently. Only 15% of support issues are resolved within 24 hours, with nearly 40% taking over a week, often requiring developer intervention. The top challenges include initial installation support and managing unexpected runtime failures, exacerbated by customers often running older software versions, leading to a feature lag compared to SaaS offerings. This situation strains support teams and detracts from innovation as developers are frequently pulled into resolving these issues. The study surveyed 695 participants across various software companies, aiming to understand market trends, support challenges, and the impact of customer-managed environments on business operations. Replicated offers solutions to improve support outcomes, such as monitoring installation success rates, pre-checking environments, and facilitating automatic updates, thus reducing the burden on both customers and support teams.

Replicated's research highlights the challenges and opportunities for software companies considering expanding their offerings into customer-managed environments, such as public and private clouds, hybrid clouds, and on-premises data centers, beyond a pure SaaS model. While some companies remain committed to SaaS, 39% plan to explore these new markets within a year, despite concerns over support, release management, development effort, and profitability. The primary issues identified include building and testing software for diverse installation options, security requirements, installer and management tooling, and obtaining useful metrics. Replicated addresses these challenges by providing solutions that facilitate efficient software development and support, aiming to reduce developer effort and increase revenue and profitability. Their research involved a global survey of 695 software professionals, revealing a significant interest in adapting to customer-managed environments to meet evolving market demands.

In September 2023, Replicated introduced a range of new features and improvements aimed at enhancing its platform's functionality and user experience. Notably, the Compatibility Matrix now supports the creation of environments for OpenShift, GKE, kURL, and HelmVM, allowing for more comprehensive testing. Additionally, a new command, replicated cluster prepare, facilitates the creation of test clusters without promoting releases, streamlining development workflows. The Vendor Portal now includes the ability to send custom metrics and test Slack webhooks, improving notification management. Enhancements to the Replicated SDK include compatibility with Helm and continuous delivery tools like ArgoCD, and support for OpenShift has been extended. Improvements in storage migration reliability and the collection of Helm install history have also been made. The release notes for the Replicated SDK and a reorganized applications section in the documentation provide better access to information for managing applications. Lastly, new topics on integrating CLI commands with CI/CD pipelines offer guidance for long-term success in deploying modern apps in customer-managed environments.

Customer-managed environments, including various cloud and on-premises options, present both challenges and opportunities for independent software vendors (ISVs), as highlighted in a study commissioned by Replicated. The study reveals that 79% of software companies report growth in these environments, with customers valuing data privacy and security, often leading to more lucrative deals compared to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings. The trend is driven by sectors like finance, healthcare, and government, which prioritize control over data due to regulatory and practical needs. Additionally, the rise of AI emphasizes the importance of data control, as customers are wary of disclosing proprietary information. Neglecting customer-managed environments can result in revenue loss, as evidenced by 47% of SaaS-only companies reporting financial setbacks for not providing customer environment installation options. The research involved 695 participants from software companies worldwide, aiming to document trends and challenges in customer-managed environments.