What release management solutions are worth investigating? [closed]

Question

In organisations where you have large numbers of applications, written in a myriad of languages running on innumerable platforms and databases how do folks manage the release of builds and patches, particularly when some of the releases are 3rd party? I know there a whole bunch of "Release Management" applications out there, but I'd be interested to know what experiences people have had.

To clarify, this isn't a question on configuration management, although that might be a small part of it. I'm more interested in managing software releases and the interdependencies and prerequisites that stem from that.

Answer 1

I have a similar problem. I have only ever seen a home grown solution to this problem (essentially a commandline program made up unix scripts).

In my investigations, the only package that I have seen so far, which specifically targets the problem is tableaux by incanica ((no affiliation). Their literature specifically talks about software components and integrating with Version Control and change management systems.