UGL Discovers SourceAnywhere's Performance Advantages in its Search for a Speedier, More Remote-Access-Friendly Source Control Solution

SUMMARY

UGL® Limited, a global diversified services company with end-to-end outsourced engineering, construction, asset management and maintenance services resulting in annual revenue of $2.2+ billion has software developer teams that rely on a collaborative environment. For a long time, UGL used Microsoft® Visual SourceSafe software as a main repository of development activities. But, the software became old and was no longer supported – it stopped meeting UGL's performance requirements. The company had to find a new source control solution to maintain a highly collaborative environment for developers regardless of their locations. UGL found Dynamsoft™ and its SourceAnywhere™ source control solution. SourceAnywhere was selected due to its similarities in operation to the previously used product. It also had available migration tools to enable an easy transition from SourceSafe. SourceAnywhere has proven itself in providing a significant boost in overall performance, particularly in security and remote access.

THE COMPANY

As a global diversified services company, UGL provides end-to-end outsourced engineering, construction, asset management and maintenance services. End-market exposures cover core sectors of rail, transport and technology systems, power, resources, water and defense. Strategic services include: engineering, construction, fabrication, manufacturing, commissioning, operations, maintenance, supply chain and technical services, refurbishments and upgrades, decommissioning, asset management, and project delivery and implementation. UGL partners include some of the world's largest blue-chip companies, government agencies, private enterprises, and public institutions. The company has many complementary capabilities across its services sectors. This gives UGL an ability to offer clients a broad range of related and highly specialized services. As a result, the business has annual revenue in excess of $2.2 billion and employs more than 7,700 people (including subcontractors) across Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia.

http://www.ugllimited.com/group-overview

THE OBSTACLE

Software development teams from UGL's engineering, fabrication, modeling, technical services and other related business sectors rely on a collaborative environment. To this end, the company has long employed the use of version control software to help foster developer collaboration. Over the years UGL relied on Microsoft® Visual SourceSafe software as the main repository of development activities. But, it was heavily a flat file systems and support for it has ceased. And, the official replacement has been found to not suit UGL's needs. The software has become quite slow to access repositories from satellite sites. The team was able to improve remote site access. However, this was a limited improvement and required third party caching products to integrate with SourceSafe.

UGL had to find a new source control solution to maintain a highly collaborative environment for its developers regardless of their locations. As a result, strong security and performance for remote access would be key features to have in the new solution.

ADDRESSING THE OBSTACLE

The UGL team began a search for an improved version control software solution. A number of commercial and open source solutions were considered. But, each researched software kept differing vastly in concepts of operation to what they were used to. In addition, associated terminology was always markedly different. Any of these new solutions would require re-training of staff on how to use it, which would de-focus the team from servicing clients. So, the search continued to avoid such operational disruptions.

In the end, UGL found Dynamsoft and its SourceAnywhere source control solution. SourceAnywhere was selected due to its similarities in operation to the previously used product. It also had available migration tools to enable an easy transition from SourceSafe.

Dynamsoft's SourceAnywhere
Dynamsoft developed its SourceAnywhere solution to deliver several advantages for its customers. The latest on-premise version is SourceAnywhere 6.0. 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.

More recent changes in September 2014 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 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 version control solution. It's an ideal replacement for VSS (SourceSafe) users, for small businesses or large enterprises.

ADDRESSING THE OBSTACLE

The SourceAnywhere product has allowed UGL to switch from the now legacy Visual SourceSafe product. The SQL-based server architecture has greatly improved remote access performance. The migration from SourceSafe to SourceAnywhere was very straightforward. This was highly aided by the similarities in operation and direct integration with Microsoft development tools like Visual Studio. The SourceAnywhere product offered UGL the most functionality that was supported by SourceSafe. It also has provided key new features, such as better security, which is particularly important for remote use. Overall, the UGL team discovered SourceAnywhere has significantly better performance.

Performance improvements are realized in everything from the UI to its security model. But, the most notable improvement is the fast access speeds from satellite sites. This performance requirement was one that UGL had pinpointed as critically important to the adoption of their new source control solution. It's a primary reason why SourceAnywhere was selected and the software has more than delivered on expectations.