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HCL App Factory® CI/CD Runtime

HCL App Factory is an out-of-the-box cloud-hosted solution that delivers continuous integration and continuous delivery for apps that are build on the Volt MX platform. With just a few configuration settings, development teams can use App Factory to build and test automation in their projects from day one. App Factory thus avoids the significant efforts and investments that are needed to set up infrastructure, automation servers, clusters of build agents, archiving, notifications, distribution, quality scans, and test devices, across the several technology stacks that a multi-experience app has to tackle.

Why do we need App Factory?

Setting up the infrastructure and tooling that is required to deliver build and test automation for a single technology stack is already a significant effort. For MXDPs, even though it all starts with a single code base, the tooling must be able to cover several specifications of the different technology stacks, which effectively multiplies the provisioning and deployment efforts several times over. Some notable examples of this include binary signing across Android and iOS and test automation across web and mobile apps. App Factory bundles all the infrastructure, logic, and tooling that is needed to target the channels that are required by a multi-experience project on day one.

Here are some of the main advantages of this approach:

  • No need to invest a significant amount of time to write build scripts or to design pipelines to tackle the technology stacks that required by each target channel.
    App Factory comes with out-of-the-box jobs which implement all the logic and already deal with the intricacies of building and testing multi-experience apps. Therefore, any new project can be set up in just a few minutes with just a few clicks.
  • No need to deploy additional infrastructure.
    App Factory is native to the Cloud and can be up and running on day one of your project.
  • No need to staff up on additional skills.
    App Factory empowers development teams to own their CI/CD solution without any prior knowledge of automation tools.
  • No need of tooling upgrades.
    App Factory automatically upgrades to keep itself up to speed with the several technology stacks that are required in order to build a multi-experience application.
    For example: You don’t have to worry about provisioning your build agents with the latest Android SDK or the latest Xcode.
  • No need to deploy test automation tools.
    App Factory comes provisioned with the necessary integrations to enable test automation for multi-experience applications, regardless of the underlying stack.
  • Best of breed approach.
    There’s a vast number of DevOps tools out in the industry. Many of these tools overlap or compete, and often offer differing approaches to solve the same problems. App Factory bundles some of the best tools out there, giving you a fully comprehensive CI/CD solution without the need to find your way through the maze.