WANdisco
Encyclopedia
WANdisco, Inc. is a United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 based software company involved in the production of Subversion, a software versioning and revision control
Revision control
Revision control, also known as version control and source control , is the management of changes to documents, programs, and other information stored as computer files. It is most commonly used in software development, where a team of people may change the same files...

 system.

History

WANdisco (Wide Area Network
Wide area network
A wide area network is a telecommunication network that covers a broad area . Business and government entities utilize WANs to relay data among employees, clients, buyers, and suppliers from various geographical locations...

 Distributed Computing
Distributed computing
Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems. A distributed system consists of multiple autonomous computers that communicate through a computer network. The computers interact with each other in order to achieve a common goal...

) was incorporated in 2005. Initially offering a replicated
Replication (computer science)
Replication is the process of sharing information so as to ensure consistency between redundant resources, such as software or hardware components, to improve reliability, fault-tolerance, or accessibility. It could be data replication if the same data is stored on multiple storage devices, or...

 multisite product for CVS
Concurrent Versions System
The Concurrent Versions System , also known as the Concurrent Versioning System, is a client-server free software revision control system in the field of software development. Version control system software keeps track of all work and all changes in a set of files, and allows several developers ...

 this was expanded to include CVSNT, Subversion and JIRA in subsequent years.

In January 2007 David Richards became President and Chief Executive Officer and expanded operations to become more involved in the Apache Subversion project itself.

During 2008 WANdisco opened a new European Headquarters in Sheffield
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...

, UK  and were Named on the SD Times 100 List
SD Times
Software Development Times, better known as SD Times, is a magazine published by BZ Media, in both a print version and an on-line electronic edition. It has been published since 2000. Since 2003, it has published an annual award list, the "SD Times 100", which honors the top 100 leaders and...

. In 2009 WANdisco were awarded the Sheffield Technology Parks Business of the Year Award.

Technology / Patents

WANdisco’s Distributed Coordination Engine (DConE) is the shared component that powers all WANdisco clustering
Cluster (computing)
A computer cluster is a group of linked computers, working together closely thus in many respects forming a single computer. The components of a cluster are commonly, but not always, connected to each other through fast local area networks...

 products.. The DConE system allows multiple instances of the same application to operate on independent hardware without sharing any resources. All of the application servers are kept in synchronisation by DConE regardless of whether the servers are on the same LAN or globally separated and accessible only over a WAN
WAN
WAN may refer to:* Wide area network * World Association of Newspapers* Wanborough railway station in England, which has the station code WAN...

. This is achieved by replicating changes made against one server to the others in real-time (Active replication
Replication (computer science)
Replication is the process of sharing information so as to ensure consistency between redundant resources, such as software or hardware components, to improve reliability, fault-tolerance, or accessibility. It could be data replication if the same data is stored on multiple storage devices, or...

).

WANdisco's replication technology was the work of Dr Yeturu Aahlad who had previously worked for Sun, Netscape and IBM and was heavily involved in developing the CORBA Framework
Çorba
Chorba , ciorbă , shurpa , shorpo , or sorpa is one of various kinds of soup or stew found in national cuisines across Middle East...

. Dr Aahlad theorized a model for effective Active replication
Replication (computer science)
Replication is the process of sharing information so as to ensure consistency between redundant resources, such as software or hardware components, to improve reliability, fault-tolerance, or accessibility. It could be data replication if the same data is stored on multiple storage devices, or...

 over a WAN
WAN
WAN may refer to:* Wide area network * World Association of Newspapers* Wanborough railway station in England, which has the station code WAN...

.

Products

WANdisco provides a range of clustering products for CVS
Concurrent Versions System
The Concurrent Versions System , also known as the Concurrent Versioning System, is a client-server free software revision control system in the field of software development. Version control system software keeps track of all work and all changes in a set of files, and allows several developers ...

 and Subversion as well as Subversion support and consultancy services. In 2011 WANdisco launched uberSVN
UberSVN
uberSVN is a Freeware software product developed by WANdisco Inc. It provides a Web Application for installation, administration and use of the Apache Subversion software versioning and revision control system. The first public beta was launched on April 22, 2011...

, a deployment of Apache Subversion which includes a web based management console and the ability to add additional ALM
Application lifecycle management
Application Lifecycle Management is a continuous process of managing the life of an application through governance, development and maintenance...

 features easily.

Customers

The company's website lists various Fortune Global 1000
Fortune 1000
Fortune 1000 is a reference to a list maintained by the American business magazine Fortune. The list is of the 1000 largest American companies, ranked on revenues alone...

 companies such as AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...

, APC, Avaya
Avaya
Avaya Inc. is a privately held computer networking, information technology and telecommunications company that is a global provider of business communications systems. The international head quarters is in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, United States...

, Bally Technologies, Thales Group
Thales Group
The Thales Group is a French electronics company delivering information systems and services for the aerospace, defense, transportation and security markets...

, Verisign
VeriSign
Verisign, Inc. is an American company based in Dulles, Virginia that operates a diverse array of network infrastructure, including two of the Internet's thirteen root nameservers, the authoritative registry for the .com, .net, and .name generic top-level domains and the .cc and .tv country-code...

, Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...

, Honda
Honda
is a Japanese public multinational corporation primarily known as a manufacturer of automobiles and motorcycles.Honda has been the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer since 1959, as well as the world's largest manufacturer of internal combustion engines measured by volume, producing more than...

, NTT
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone
, commonly known as NTT, is a Japanese telecommunications company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. Ranked the 31st in Fortune Global 500, NTT is the largest telecommunications company in Asia, and the second-largest in the world in terms of revenue....

, Intel and Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...

.

Open Source Contribution

In October 2009, WANdisco provided funding for three full time Open Source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 contributors to work on the Subversion project. One of the contributors, Hyrum Wright was also appointed as WANdisco’s Director of Open Source. The other contributors are Philip Martin who had been a core Subversion contributor for the previous 8 years and was part of the original Subversion development team, and Julian Foad who had been a core Subversion contributor since 2003.

Subversion Server Binaries

WANdisco currently provides Subversion binary downloads for Debian
Debian
Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...

, CentOS
CentOS
CentOS is a free operating system based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux . It exists to provide a free enterprise class computing platform and strives to maintain 100% binary compatibility with its upstream distribution...

 and RHEL via its website. These binaries have been through a complete testing cycle and use the default package management system for each Linux distribution.

uberSVN

On April 22nd 2011 WANDisco launched UberSVN
UberSVN
uberSVN is a Freeware software product developed by WANdisco Inc. It provides a Web Application for installation, administration and use of the Apache Subversion software versioning and revision control system. The first public beta was launched on April 22, 2011...

, a package containing Subversion and all its dependencies with an easy to use installer and web based management interface. The goal of UberSVN
UberSVN
uberSVN is a Freeware software product developed by WANdisco Inc. It provides a Web Application for installation, administration and use of the Apache Subversion software versioning and revision control system. The first public beta was launched on April 22, 2011...

is to provide "an open extensible platform for application lifecycle management (ALM) that's easy to install, easy to use and easy to extend."

Subversion project announcements

In December 2010, WANdisco announced their intention to undertake major work on the Subversion project, specifically aimed at improving branching and merging functionality. These changes had been proposed by the community previously but there had been no activity towards implementing them. WANdisco stated that demand from their enterprise customers had led to the decision to commit resources in this area.

Some perceived the timing and manner of the announcement to be controversial and at odds with the Apache Software Foundation's position as leaders of the Subversion project. David Richards from WANdisco clarified this position stating that he in no way wished to undermine the Subversion community and followed up by announcing WANdisco's sponsorship and ongoing support for the work of the Apache Software Foundation.

Further reading

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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