‘Deploy and rollout’ are words with similar connotations, and used almost interchangeably by people, which is wrong. Rollout refers to inauguration or initial public exhibition of a new product or service (or may be a policy). The newly developed electric car will rollout from the factory in a month’s time from now is what a statement can read. Deploy is more often used in terms of positioning of troops in the situation of combat. The US has deployed its Marines in the Gulf of Mexico says that the marines have been positioned in a state of readiness by the country in the Gulf of Mexico. Though, there are similarities as these two words are frequently used today in terms of software development and installation, there are differences that will be highlighted in this article.
Deployment of software is a difficult exercise that incorporates many steps and should not be misconstrued as final installation of software on computers. There are many activities both at the end of the manufacturer and at the end of the consumers. Just a look at this sequence of activities will make one wonder how broad the term deployment is. These activities include release, install and activate, deactivate, adapt, update, built-in, version tracking, uninstall, and finally retire.
Take a look at these two examples:
It takes a long time and a lot of effort to finally roll out new software.
Deployment of software involves a series of steps that finally end with retirement of software.
Software giant introduced Vista as an operating system which was a roll out as it involved providing services to volumes license holders beginning November 2006 till the end of January 2007 when it was finally sold to the end users.
Hope this explanation makes the difference of roll out and deployment clear to the readers.