A centralized storage system for managing build outputs, software packages, container images, and deployment artifacts throughout the software delivery lifecycle. Like a warehouse that stores and organizes all the parts needed to assemble a product, artifact repositories version, secure, and distribute the components that make up your applications. AWS offers CodeArtifact and ECR, Azure provides Azure Artifacts and ACR, GCP has Artifact Registry, and OCI offers Container Registry.
A development team publishes npm packages to AWS CodeArtifact and Docker images to ECR as part of their CI/CD pipeline. Each build produces versioned artifacts that can be deployed to any environment, ensuring consistency between staging and production.
Every major cloud provider offers managed artifact and container registry services that integrate with their CI/CD and deployment tools.