“Know Your Ropes” – What does a Lifesling & Armory Solution Architects have in common? hero graphic

“Know Your Ropes” – What does a Lifesling & Armory Solution Architects have in common?

Nov 24, 2020 by Armory

Is your business immune from the need for quality software development? Developing, building, and shipping quality software quickly is the primary engine of value creation in companies across all industries. As we reflect on 2020 and how COVID-19 impacted the world, Continuous Delivery and Spinnaker is now getting the attention of c-suites and boards around the world of G2K companies.

In this edition of “Know Your Ropes”, you will learn about the safety benefits of a Lifesling in addition to the benefits that our customers receive by gaining access to the Armory Solution Architecture team.

Before we jump into why Armory is going to save you a lot of time, money, and frustration, let’s talk about the Lifesling.

What is a Lifesling?

The Lifesling, with its floating collar at the end of a 150-foot floating yellow polypropylene line, removes the need for pinpoint accuracy in returning to a MOB and helps recover the person on the first attempt. There’s no argument that it’s hard to stop a sailboat at a specific place in ideal conditions, let alone hitting a specific mark in high winds and waves. It’s even harder and nearly impossible to do so when adrenaline is pumping and the crew is anxious because a friend is in peril.

The Lifesling, used by circling the victim as if you were picking up a downed water skier, doesn’t require that you sail so close to the swimmer that you risk hitting the MOB. And, once the MOB puts the collar under their shoulders, they are mechanically attached to the boat and you are not depending on someone’s grip to hold on. Also, you have the advantage of a powerful halyard winch to bring them back aboard. Even a small person can lift a soaking wet 250-pound person out of the water using a winch.

Now you may be asking yourself, what does a Lifesling have to do with Spinnaker and Armory? A Lifesling is synonymous with our customer success organization which includes Solution Architects, Customer Success, and Support. In this blog, we’ll focus on the SA team.

Introducing Armory Solution Architects

Armory Solution Architects have over 18 years of combined experience running Spinnaker in production at scale. Their backgrounds include DigitalOnUs, The Home Depot, Informatica, Kenzan, and Pivotal. This team has worked with the worlds largest organizations running Spinnaker. Their knowledge extends to best practices in Kubernetes, integrations, security, and general CICD best practices.

Partnering with Armory’s Solutions Architecture Team

Our Solutions Architects serve as expert guides in the adoption of Armory, our feature-packed, enterprise-grade distribution of Spinnaker. Spinnaker best practices are developed in coordination with our peers and our broad customer base. They work with our customers to identify opportunities for high impact / low friction SDLC optimizations in the following ways:

  • Advice on Operational Implementation to include:
    • Installation
    • Configuration
    • Optimization
  • Advice on operational & usage strategy to maximize user developer adoption.
  • Provide one-on-one coaching as well as formal classroom training.

We often invite members of the SA team to engage with customers near the end of an evaluation process to provide future customers a glimpse into life after evaluation.

Jumpstart for Enterprises

Jumpstart for Enterprises is available as an add-on to Armory Enterprise support and subscription annual contracts and include the following:

Conclusion

The Armory Solution Architects’ Jumpstart package, much like the USCG-approved Life Sling 2, is the most compact, economical, and effective way to get your organization to become a high performer using Spinnaker. Treat your CD system as a Mission Critical platform and stop scripting your way to production.

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