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As enterprise software continues to evolve, so do the challenges of securely distributing commercial applications into these complex customer environments. As we move into the second half of 2025, we recently reflected back on the meaningful value we’ve added over the past few months, and continue to add now, across each stage of the Commercial Software Distribution Lifecycle, offering software vendors new capabilities that are purpose-built for commercial software distribution.
The Challenge: Complex Enterprise Environments Demand Better Solutions
Enterprise customers operate in increasingly sophisticated environments, from air-gapped networks to multi-cloud deployments. Traditional software distribution methods often fall short when it comes to security, compatibility, and ease of installation in these complex scenarios. That's where Replicated's purpose-built Commercial Software Distribution Lifecycle (CSDLC) platform makes the difference.
Our Comprehensive CSDLC Approach
The Replicated Platform helps software companies address every critical stage of the commercial software distribution lifecycle:
- Develop with SecureBuild for enhanced application security posture (new - read more below)
- Test using our Compatibility Matrix to gain confidence installing into complex customer environments (improved - read more below)
- Release application assets through our next-generation, brandable Enterprise Portal (new - read more below)
- License and enforce customer entitlements with our flexible Customer Licensing options
- Install your application via multiple deployment options for common customer-managed environments (improved - read more below)
- Report on health and adoption through Instance Insights for application visibility, even in air gap environments
- Support with comprehensive tooling, like Install Checks and Support Bundles, as well as Replicated support services (improved - read more below)
Major Enhancements: Security and Installation Success at the Forefront
Over the past year, we've made meaningful improvements across every area of the CSDLC, with two key themes driving our investments: strengthening security enablement around your application delivery and increasing installation success confidence when installing into customer-controlled environments.
New Security Capabilities
SecureBuild Introduction: Our new SecureBuild product represents a game-changer for both Replicated and our vendor partners. But this isn’t just about providing you with an easier method to obtain secured images, our SecureBuild technology is also powering many upcoming Replicated Platform enhancements to help you further strengthen your own security posture with enterprise buyers.
We’re currently working to ensure that key Replicated products are powered by SecureBuild, as well empowering vendors to have better visibility on what they need to produce and ship CVE-free applications, helping commercial software products address one of the most pressing concerns in enterprise software deployment today. Want a sneak peak of what’s coming soon? Let your Account Executive know.
Next-Generation Release Experience with Enterprise Portal
Enterprise Portal (BETA): We've launched a complete evolution of our Download Portal offering, providing customers with an improved unboxing experience that includes enhanced branding, dynamic instructions, automated customer emails, support bundle uploads, installation insights, and a significantly improved security posture.
An upcoming extension of Enterprise Portal, already under active development, will make it easier for software vendors to share security information like image signatures and SLSA (Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts) reports directly within the customer app release flow, making security information accessible to enterprise customers exactly when and where it's needed. This capability will be rolling out more broadly over the next month or so, but let your Account Executive know if you’d like an early preview.
Advanced Installation Capabilities
Enhanced Air Gap Support: Replicated’s new Helm Air Gap use case support also introduced new catalog endpoints for pull-based image caching and replication, ensuring smooth deployments even in the most restrictive environments.
Embedded Cluster 2.0: Now featuring GA multi-node support and headless automated installation capabilities, Embedded Cluster v2 represents a significant leap forward in click-ops guided deployments on linux machines.
Replicated continues to evolve our installer product experiences with enterprise and vendor feedback informed design enhancements. Want to learn more about what we’re doing next and potentially be a design partner that helps shape these capabilities? Reach out to us.
Expanded Testing Capabilities
Testing in Complex Environments: Compatibility Matrix now lets you spin up ephemeral VMs (ALPHA) with no Kubernetes cluster pre-installed. This gives you more flexibility to test initial install and upgrades of Embedded Cluster in a customer-representative method. Additionally, our new Air Gap (ALPHA) feature lets you set a strict network policy on both VMs and Kubernetes clusters, so that you can be sure your application is actually airgap-ready before shipping your release to your most security-conscious customers.
Network Policy Validation and Reporting: Compatibility Matrix also has a new ability to report on network activity (ALPHA), allowing you to see all attempts at network egress from your application. With details about the source and destination of the request, you can correct those outbound connection attempts or to create an allowlist to provide to your end customer.
To try these new features, let your Account Executive know so we can enable feature flags to offer you early access.
Improved Support Experience
Streamlined Support Bundle Process: Your enterprise end customers can now upload their Support Bundles directly through the new Enterprise Portal, dramatically simplifying the troubleshooting process and reducing time-to-resolution for support issues. This capability extends beyond KOTS users, making Enterprise Portal the true one-stop destination for software unboxing, updating, and support.
Looking Forward: Continued Investment in Enabling Your Customer Success
Our investment focus remains laser-focused on two complementary goals that work powerfully in combination: strong security enablement throughout the platform and high installation success rates when vendors use Replicated's platform and installers.
These aren't competing priorities – they're synergistic. We help you approach your enterprise customers with a strong security posture that demonstrates you're ready for security-conscious environments, while delivering the high successful installation rates that close deals and keep customers happy.
The Bottom Line
The Replicated Platform continues to be the best way to secure and distribute your software to enterprise customers of every size and complexity level, including air-gapped environments. These recent enhancements represent our ongoing commitment to solving the real challenges vendors face in the enterprise software distribution lifecycle.
Ready to see how these enhancements can transform your software distribution strategy? Contact our team to learn more about how Replicated can accelerate your enterprise software success.