What process involves making changes to the production environment using configuration management platforms to support newly updated applications?

The process of making changes to the production environment using configuration management platforms to support newly updated applications is accurately described as continuous deployment.

Continuous deployment is the practice of automatically releasing every change that passes the automated tests to production, ensuring that updates are made swiftly and efficiently. This approach allows development teams to roll out application updates more frequently without manual intervention, reducing the risk of errors that can occur when changes are deployed manually.

In this context, configuration management platforms play a crucial role by automating the process of managing server configurations and application deployments, ensuring that the environment remains consistent and that applications are updated seamlessly. This leads to enhanced reliability and speed in delivering new features to users.

Other practices mentioned, like continuous integration and continuous delivery, focus on different stages in the software development lifecycle. Continuous integration emphasizes the integration of code changes into a shared repository several times a day, while continuous delivery ensures that code is always in a deployable state but may require manual approval for deployment to production. Continuous monitoring, on the other hand, relates to tracking performance and security in real-time, rather than the deployment process itself.