Definition and Validation of the Key process of Release, Delivery and Deployment for Product Software Vendors: turning the ugly duckling into a swan

For software vendors the processes of release, delivery, and deployment to customers are inherently complex. However, software vendors can greatly improve their product quality and quality of service by applying a model that focuses on customer interaction if such a model were available. This paper presents a model for customer configuration updating (CCU) that can evaluate the practices of a software vendor in these processes. Nine extensive case studies of medium to large product software vendors are presented and evaluated using the model, thereby uncovering issues in their release, delivery, and deployment processes. Finally, organisational and architectural changes are proposed to increase quality of service and product quality for software vendors. 1 Customer-Vendor Interaction With the advent of increased amounts of bandwidth the communication between software vendors and their customers can greatly be improved by introducing automatic error feedback reporting, usage feedback reporting, electronic customer feedback, as well as license, patch, and update distribution. Whereas in the past customers and vendors could only communicate by mail and phone, the World Wide Web can now function as a lifeline between customers and software vendors, to allow for automatic license retrieval, deployment and error feedback, automatic updates, and automatic provision of commercial information to customers. Product software vendors, however, generally do not implement any of these practices. To date product software is a packaged configuration of software components or a software-based service, with auxiliary materials, which is released for and traded in a specific market. Product software vendors encounter many problems when attempting to improve customer configuratio