CentraSite supports configurations where different CentraSite instances are used to represent lifecycle stages or usages. So CentraSite could for example be set up with two instances development and production to represent the different phases in a software development lifecycle; it could also be set up with instances differentiating between asset creation and asset consumption aspects.

Promotion refers to the capability to copy an asset, a lifecycle model or a policy from one lifecycle stage to another; this is done by exporting the object from its current registry and importing it into the registry that hosts the next phase of its lifecycle.

A stage definition in CentraSite is managed by a lifecycle stage object which describes a CentraSite instance by name and configuration information.

Those stages are assigned to lifecycle model states to define the allowed promotion paths for objects in a certain lifecycle state. To promote an object from one lifecycle stage to another, the object is exported (and optionally deleted) from the source registry and then imported in the target registry.

When any object from the source registry is in an end state, one or more registries can be defined to which the object can be imported; attempting to import it into any other target will subsequently fail.

On import, the registry object keeps its lifecycle state if its lifecycle model is available in the target registry; if the model does not exist, the object is set to the initial state in the default lifecycle model.