Why use a development environment?

As we mentioned in the previous chapter, OpenShift is an application delivery platform that can simplify day to day duties for infrastructure engineers and development teams. If a company's software delivery strategy is aligned with containers, OpenShift can significantly help to reduce production time.

Every platform has a community. It is an ecosystem around the platform that helps to improve the platform's functionality, aligns the platform with end user needs, and so on. OpenShift has a community that includes some important members that use the platform: software developers, QA specialists, system administrators, IT architects, and so on. It is very important for OpenShift to extend its community and involve new team members and customers. To achieve this, all team members should have access to the OpenShift environment; depending on their roles, specialists will perform software development, testing, and software delivery. Not every software developer or QA team member will be able to set OpenShift up from scratch, and that is the main reason they seek an easy way to start working with OpenShift.

The OpenShift development environment can be created easily and doesn't require significant effort. Usually, this environment is located on a local PC and doesn't have a large capacity.

There are a number of benefits in having an easy-to-use development environment:

• OpenShift evaluation: Sometimes, users want to understand how OpenShift is aligned with their needs. They may have no experience with OpenShift, and may want to touch it on a real system. For most technical people, marketing presentations/demonstrations don't mean anything. A fast and easy deployment process for the development environment can help.
• A quick environment for developers/QAs: Developers usually don't want to get too involved with deploying an environment. A fast method for deploying OpenShift can save some effort, allowing them to focus on primary activities (such as software development and testing).