Talking about Content Deployment System
with Seung-hwi Kim
Q1.
Please tell us a little bit about you.
Hi, I’m Seung-hwi Kim from a System Architect Team of ACT
Business Department at I-ON. I’m in charge of pre-sales, technical support and
consulting.
Q2.
What is IDS? Can you put it simply for non-techies to understand easily?
IDS is a sort of content deployment system that stands for I-ON
Deploy Server (hereinafter “IDS”) and a dictionary definition of “deployment”
is to arrange in a position of readiness, or to move strategically or
appropriately. Since the word is commonly used in media and publication, its
definition sounds similar to “release”. “Release” could mean some new products
are ready to sell and use in terms of computer software and hardware while it
means to free from confinement, bondage, obligation and etc.
Those words have somewhat different definition each other but those
all seem to involve the meaning of “spread something out”.
Back to the definition of Deployment in IDS, I’d like to put it
this way.
Who and
why spreads something out to where.
Who: IT system manager, admin
Why: to automate business process, to minimize maintenance cost,
to manage history
Something: content or all the physical files
Where: singular or multiple servers where the physical files are
received
So, a Content Deployment System enables the IT system manager to
deploy content or files to a singular or multiple servers to automate business
process, manage history and reduce maintenance fees.
I-ON Communications provides IDS for IT system managers to fully
keep track of the content deployment processes.
Q3.
What do you think the differentiators of IDS are?
IDS makes files deployment easier especially in distributed
server environment and multiplatform environment. In order to operate and
manage enterprise-level diverse services more efficiently, IDS accommodates
features as the following.
A. Automate transfer/deploy processes to speed up the
service.
IDS supports auto-mirroring (synchronization) to a singular
server of multiple servers and enables configuration management of the updated
resources by category in the predefined receiving server.
You can set access authority and approval rules to each category.
Apply auto-approval rule or manual one for the purpose of each category to
manage work history and configuration.
Just like the way it works in the receiving server, IDS supports
files deployment to a singular or multiple servers.
In this way IDS synchronizes resources set in the receiving
server to trace history, automates work process by performing deployment based
on the predefined approval rule and eventually enhances the service
performance.
B. Support multi-deployment environment with compressed
and encrypted transmission
The system manages physical file itself even though it can be
categorized and since the system, in general, deploys multiple files, the files
are compressed and encrypted when they are deployed. IDS enables you to
configure the compression ratio and encryption level and transmit them simultaneously
based on transaction to ensure the service integrity.
The transaction configuration is related to a recovery policy
that is contingent upon transmission. You may either cancel deployment to all
the servers or go on deployment to the servers that work when there’s an error
on a specific server.
C. History management and prompt rollback for all the
changes
IDS supports auto synchronization with the predefined receiving
servers other than a manual uploading feature. When an update is found during
synchronization, IDS manages history of updates by file and performs version
control. You may compare two different versions and trace change history and
also rollback to a specific version if needed. This is a partial backups.
IDS provides full backups and restores called “Snapshot” as
well. It ensures prompt recovery from errors by recording and backing up the
current state of the files that are deployed at that time and supporting a
batch rollback.
Q4.
IDS has been adopted by a number of customers. What do you this the reasons are?
IDS has been adopted by financial institutions, broadcasters,
credit card insurance companies, education and many more where the integrated
management of multiple systems and services are needed. I think they chose IDS
for the reasons as below.
First, scarcity.
IDS seems to be the sole product specializing in “deployment”.
There of course are open source tools like
Maven, Jenkins that are used for development of such system and web service but
those are only for the purpose of development. IDS even gives non-IT
professional optimized features for operating and managing all physical file.
Second, security and work efficiency.
People have been facing challenges human errors from the
traditional system such as uploading of incomplete files, omission of files, security
issue during user authentication by directly accessing FTP server and bounce
attack vulnerability on uploading physical files. IDS addresses these issues
and ensures security, stability, deployment optimization to boost productivity
and reduce maintenance costs.
Third, availability.
Since IDS is 100% web based, it works in any type of server whatever
the OS is. As long as you’ve got files ready to deploy for multiple services,
IDS is right here for you.
Q5.
How do you see the market situation for the content deployment system?
The more stable and efficient system are required as the
opportunity cost is getting increased in the rapidly growing digital market.
The market is now focusing more on a little bit of customization
to packaged ECM offerings on the ground of stability while SI (System
Integration) businesses used to seem more attractive as IT professionals
thought it made more sense that SI is an optimized approach to meet the
customer’s requirements and satisfy them.
Local content deployment system market is growing on a small
scale and I’m not even sure if I can define this as a “market”. There are
companies that need to adopt the deployment solution but in reality it is hard
to find the one that meets their requirements. Capabilities of deployment
system that customers expect are quite common but the market is still too
immature to accurately deliver features as customers expect.
I think the content deployment system should be readily
available ensuring stability, security, availability and its functions need to
serve more general purpose.
Q6.
How do you see the future of IDS?
File transfer and deployment are still sticking to a traditional
manual approach in every phase of editing / transfer / verification /
deployment processes. So it is inevitable that the professionals face human
errors, extra workload for history management, communication issues between people
in charge.
“A comprehensive deployment system that can provides not only
configuration management but the deployment history and status monitoring.”
By monitoring deployed resources, not just conducting synchronization
/ management / verification / deployment that are optimized for the resources, deployment
system should be more user-friendly in terms of system operation and technical
support and also enable easier and faster introduction.
On the other hand, vendors can target small-scale B2C services by
providing more segmented offerings while the current packaging type can be a
more appropriate approach to B2B. I hope making a new revenue stream in small
service market will work as a catalyst in the local deployment solution market.
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