All case studies / Ubisoft
Ubisoft can deploy new releases in minutes with Octopus Deploy
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About Ubisoft
Ubisoft creates and distributes video games worldwide, providing original and memorable entertainment experiences.
The 5 Guillemot brothers started Ubisoft in 1986 after noticing an opportunity in the growing software development industry. Today, Ubisoft has over 45 studios and more than 21,000 employees, making up a diverse global team.
Its deep portfolio of brands includes Assassin’s Creed®, Brawlhalla®, For Honor®, Far Cry®, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon®, Just Dance®, Rabbids®, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six®, The Crew®, and Tom Clancy’s The Division®.
Challenges
Ubisoft needed to modernize its complex deployment processes
The Ubisoft IT team manages hundreds of projects across dozens of business units. Historically, they struggled with managing complex manual tasks and monolithic systems. Processes were inefficient which reduced deployment speed and added risk to their operations.
The team was managing deployments across a range of environments. This included Windows, Linux, cloud, and on-premises. They also deployed to internal systems and third-party partners. The team needed a tool to help them manage this complexity. They wanted to reduce time-consuming challenges and lower effort for a more scalable and modernized infrastructure.
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With Octopus, we have experienced a significant reduction in deployment time. Now deploying new releases can be accomplished in a matter of minutes. Administrators and developers are no longer burdened with the monotony of repetitive tasks which is a game changer. We now channel our energy and expertise towards innovations, automatization, and projects that advance our industry forward.
Solution
Ubisoft uses Octopus Deploy to eliminate manual processes
The team at Ubisoft wanted to automate and simplify their deployments so they could focus on innovations and new projects. They chose Octopus Deploy to manage their complex deployments across a range of environments.
Octopus has removed a huge technical load from Ubisoft’s admins so they can focus on critical tasks like new features and pipeline improvements.
The team also use Octopus’s open API to create automations to retrieve information. This has made auditing tasks and mass editing across their lifecycles much easier, further improving efficiency.
Automating and simplifying deployments was our main goal. With its multi-OS capacities, ease of use, and the execution of custom scripts and passing of values throughout the deployment process, Octopus has made our pipelines smoother and has organized and relieved a huge technical load from our admins.
Ubisoft's CI/CD pipeline
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Value
Faster, simpler deployments
Using Octopus Deploy, Ubisoft has eliminated time-consuming and error-prone manual tasks. What once was a time-intensive and risk-filled process across environments is now automated and simple. As a result, Ubisoft has significantly reduced its deployment times and can deploy new releases in minutes.
Octopus’s presentation and handling of multiple lifecycles and environments is the best I have seen.
Less administrative burden, more time for innovation
Octopus handles multiple lifecycles and environments. This means Ubisoft’s admins can confidently provide self-service deployments and configuration changes to development teams and team leaders. With less administration burden, the team can deliver greater value by improving pipeline efficiency and rolling out new features.
Simpler management of projects across environments
Ubisoft’s teams deploy a handful of similar types of projects. These include microservice APIs running in Kubernetes, AWS (Amazon Web Services) Lambda functions, and web pages on IIS. Octopus reduces overhead for the Ops team by letting developers clone existing projects in a self-service manner. When they find issues or implement new features in their deployment processes, they can update the use of templates across all projects with the press of a button.
Octopus’s OpenAPI implementation makes it easy to script against and create automations to retrieve information. We use it for deployment histories across all our deployment targets, scraping the audit log, and mass-editing our channels and lifecycles. The interactive Swagger docs make it a breeze to find the info we need.
A picture of the near future
Octopus introduced new features that the team are investigating to save more time and space and reduce complexity.
The team are interested in sourcing Kubernetes manifests directly from their Git repository with Octopus. This would mean no longer including a separate package from their repositories just to include Kubernetes manifests. Similarly, they could replace several manual scripted steps when deploying to Kubernetes, increasing efficiency and reducing maintenance overhead.
They’re also looking into Octopus’s Config as Code features. The team want to further embrace best practices for modifications to the Octopus configuration itself, mirroring how they treat change processes for their games and deployments. This will provide a familiar workflow for their DevOps engineers. This includes traditional branching strategies, templating, and powerful auditing tools to increase confidence in their change procedures to Octopus as a whole.