The more processes developers and engineers can automate, techies say, the faster and more advanced their applications will become. However, certain processes are not yet ripe to have human brains taken completely out of the equation. Deploying code to the cloud is one of those tasks that benefit from a mix of automation and human oversight — does this open-source tool strike the perfect balance?

Dianne Marsh, director of engineering tools at Netflix Inc., spoke about the open-source cloud tool she helped create, called Spinnaker, a Continuous Delivery platform. Her efforts on the technology were recognized at CloudNOW, the 5th Annual “Top 10 Women in Cloud” Innovation Awards. CloudNOW is a non-profit consortium of leading women in cloud computing and converging technologies.

Marsh told Lisa Martin (@Luccazara), host of theCUBE*, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, about the double-edged sword that automation presents. (*Disclosure below) “If you say ‘continuous delivery,’ people are like, ‘Wait a minute — I’m not ready for that train to go. I might need to stop on the way,'” she said.

The engineers tackled this by building into the tool a manual stage that allows users to pause or roll back the automation process when needed. “That allows them to not only deploy their code, but send it through several gates along the way,” she said.

Continuous collabo

Spinnaker is an open source, multi-cloud continuous delivery platform used for releasing software changes. The tool provides two core sets of features, including cluster management and deployment management. Marsh said the project began among herself and other Netflix engineers (using AWS cloud) but then branched out.

“We reached out to our friends in the industry and Google worked on their Google Cloud endpoints; Microsoft is working on Azure endpoints; Pivital worked on solutions for Cloud Foundery; Target and Veritas worked on OpenStack,” she explained, saying that practically anyone can use the tool now.

Aside from making Spinnaker available to more users, the collaboration also brought together industry heavy-hitters to work together and share ideas on open-source technology, Marsh explained.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the CloudNOW – 5th Annual “Top 10 Women in Cloud” Innovation Awards. (*Disclosure: Some segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE are sponsored. However, no sponsorships have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo by SiliconANGLE