News

Background

Navis, a subsidiary of Cargotec Corporation is the global technology standard for managing the movement of cargo through terminals, standing the test of time. Navis combines industry best practices with innovative technology and world-class services to enable our customers to maximize performance and reduce risk.

Before implementing Subversion MultiSite, Navis used the Apache Subversion svnsync repository mirroring tool. While svnsync worked initially, they eventually found themselves struggling with its limitations as their development organization grew and became more distributed.

Challenge

The limitations that Navis encountered in their utilization of svnsync that led them to look for alternatives included the following:

• A master-slave approach to synchronizing repositories that resulted in developers at remote sites working with out of date source code – causing merge problems, rework and missed deadlines.
• Instability over wide area network (WAN) connections resulting in frequent and costly outages for their numerous remote development sites.
• No standardized or built-in backup and recovery features – causing it to be virtually impossible to operate on a 24-by-7 basis without significant administrator support.
• Lack of continuous integration support for Navis’ distributed environment.

Solution

Navis selected and deployed Subversion MultiSite to support over 500 users at six sites located in the US, Europe, Asia and the Middle East:

With Subversion MultiSite servers connected over a WAN synchronize immediately on every commit, or other write operation, so that repositories at every location are always exact copies of each other. Developers everywhere have full read and write access to the latest changes at local network speed. They are able to work as if they are one team at the same location. Built-in hot backup, failover and automated disaster recovery features eliminate downtime and data loss. These features can be leveraged to take servers offline for maintenance without disrupting users.

Subversion MultiSite is easy to install and can be deployed globally in a matter of hours. Once deployed, there's no retraining required because Subversion MultiSite is completely transparent to users. In addition, the entire implementation can be monitored and administered from a single site.

Results

• A 10X reduction in check in and checkout times for developers in all of their remote locations.
• Merge conflicts and the rework that resulted from remote developers working from stale source code checked out from their local slave repositories have been eliminated.
• 24-by-7 operation has been achieved worldwide with no downtime, for either planned or unplanned outages.
• Continuous integration is supported globally now that builds can be run from any site with the latest version of the source code.
• Administrative overhead has been reduced by over 50%.
• Software development projects are now completed on time and under budget.

About Navis
Navis, a part of Cargotec Corporation, is the global technology standard for managing the movement of cargo through terminals, standing the test of time. Navis combines industry best practices with innovative technology and world-class services to enable our customers to maximize performance and reduce risk. Whether tracking cargo through a port, automating equipment operations, or managing multiple terminals through an integrated, centralized solution, Navis provides a holistic approach to operational optimization. This provides improved visibility, velocity and measurable business results.