While I can not take the credit for coming up with Continuous Integration (it can be traced back to timeless practices) or for even coining the term, I can take the credit for creating one of the first Open Source (later turned commercial) CI servers — Anthill, released in July of 2001. That has given me an almost unique vantage point for watching the evolution of CI and seeing it take the industry by storm. One of the most interesting phenomenon I have come across was seeing our customers use AnthillPro (back when it had build only functionality) to automate deployments back in 2004. Keep in mind that this was back in the days before the term Continuous Delivery was coined. At first it seemed to me that the wrong tool was being used for the job. But then I realized that the features present in any implementation of CI really advanced Automation from the invention stage to the innovation stage. Continue reading →