Business Micros Moved to SourceAnywhere Version Control from VSS for Faster Remote Access and Better Team Collaboration

SUMMARY

Business Micros has been a software development shop out of Scotland since the late 1970s. It has a strong focus of providing software development and related services for all levels of the manufacturing industry. Its flagship Evolution software allows organizations to efficiently manage complex office systems and factory management processes. The software covers a plethora of required capabilities: reporting, purchasing and stock control, document scanning and management, barcode scanning, dispatch, customer relations, production, staffing and more. For years, Business Micros used Microsoft® Visual SourceSafe (VSS) to help manage source code development and projects. But, as the need for remote access for developers grew, the software’s limitations grew more obvious. Business Micros’ programmer teams soon found the source control software didn’t provide reliable offsite access. A new solution had become paramount to find. Business Micros was instantly lucky. The team started with a quick online search for a newer source control software solution. Dynamsoft’s SourceAnywhere version control application was the first hit. Business Micros immediately realized improvements in collaboration with software developers that required remote access. Today, SourceAnywhere is used daily by the company’s programmers for key features such as, remote access, source code reviews and changes, and more. Without such new functionalities, the team fully knew it could have had far more significant collaboration difficulties in the years ahead.

THE COMPANY

Located in Scotland, Business Micros started in the IT industry in 1979 and has since grown to become a highly focused software development shop for all levels of the manufacturing industry. For this industry, the company provides its flagship Evolution tracking and management software systems, amongst many other software offerings.

Evolution allows organizations to efficiently manage complex office systems and factory management processes. The software covers a plethora of required capabilities: reporting, purchasing and stock control, document scanning and management, barcode scanning, dispatch, customer relations, production, staffing and more.

With 30+ employees, the company has three locations across the UK. Business Micros is also active internationally, particularly in the Asia Pacific region where strong business relationships have been developed in the Australian and New Zealand markets. It has also been investing in a number of other countries, which has further assisted growth.

http://www.businessmicros.co.uk

THE PROBLEM

To continually improve its Evolution and other software solutions, Business Micros is always retooling applications with critical updates and enhancements. Over the years, the tools used to maintain a high level of quality in their software evolved. Today, extensive collaboration amongst software development teams is far more required. Therefore, keeping source code and project management information in a central location is important. It’s also important to regularly backup code and track changes in software development. More and more, Business Micros also needed to be able to have teams access the source code remotely. This was important due to some software developers being located beyond main office locations.

For years, Business Micros used Microsoft® Visual SourceSafe. But, as the need for remote access grew the software’s limitations grew more obvious. Business Micros’ programmer teams found SourceSafe didn’t provide reliable offsite access. So, the teams had to manually send relevant files to developers. Upon finishing work on any files, they were sent back to the office for a team member to load into SourceSafe database. The process grew more and more inefficient as Business Micros grew more and more successful. A new solution had become paramount to find.

THE SOLUTION

Business Micros was instantly lucky. The team started with a quick online search for a newer source control software solution. Incidentally, Dynamsoft’s SourceAnywhere version control application was the first software found online. A free trial was immediately downloaded and tested. It turned out the SourceAnywhere software did precisely what they desired, and then some.

SourceAnywhere
Dynamsoft developed its SourceAnywhere solution to deliver several code, file and project management advantages for its customers. The latest on-premise version is SourceAnywhere 6.1. New features include project branch and merge capabilities to enable better parallel code development and management amongst teams. Programmers can create project branches to work on different development paths and merge the changes when ready. The branching can be done by latest version, a specified historical version, or a labelled version. There is also a new wizard-based merge feature. It lets users merge code changes from a source branch to target branch. The changes can be auto-merged or resolved manually if any conflicts happen. Before a merge, users can compare the source/target branch version to the base version and also compare a source to target to see the differences.

Other updates have since expanded upon this. Folder-level branch and merge have been improved with a type of merge, recover and edit mode. Merge results can also be exported. The interface for the project and file branches was also improved.

SourceAnywhere also provides 64-bit server support, which allows the software to handle 500+ concurrent worldwide connections. This also improves memory availability and parallel processing performance compared to a 32-bit environment. The software can be used within various integrated development environments (IDE). These include Visual Studio®, Eclipse™, Dreamweaver® and other IDEs compatible with Microsoft® Source Code Control Interface (MSSCCI). SourceAnywhere provides a simple and cost-effective source control solution, and a replacement for VSS users, for small businesses or large enterprises.

REALIZED BENEFITS

Business Micros immediately realized improvement in collaboration with software developers that required remote access. Also, manual backups have become automated backups thanks to the main data repository being SQL Server.

In addition to remote access features, the team relies on other SourceAnywhere capabilities on a daily basis. The team is always reviewing and comparing differing code versions or file versions to more easily understand what has changed or when something has gone wrong. Without such new functionalities, the team fully knew it could have had far more significant difficulties in the years ahead.

Every day, SourceAnywhere is put to good use. Each developer on the team uses it for a multitude of tasks. It could be to check the code history and verify how or why something has changed. It might also be to more easily roll back to a previous version. SourceAnywhere has proven simple to use too. Everything is intuitive. Business Micros uses Visual Studio. So, the seamless integration with popular IDE’s like Visual Studio helps keep fluidity in processes from application to application.