Geography: Australia
Business Challenge: CVSDude required a platform that was affordable, bullet-proof, and ensured scheduled release cycles
Migration Path: CVSDude selected Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Solution
Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
Hardware: 24 x AMD and Intel chipsets, up to quad code 2.5GHz
Benefits:
BACKGROUND
Since 2002, CVSDude has served as the original provider of free and commercial Subversion hosting and CVS hosting for individuals, startups, and Fortune 1,000 companies.
CVSDude’s technology allows maximum availability to source code while ensuring its security. It delivers this service through dual CPU servers running hardware RAID-5, each connected by 6x redundant 10GigE pipes, and all housed in state of the art US-based data centres.
CHALLENGE
More than 65,000 users, including Government
institutions, private enterprises, universities, and not-for-profit
organisations across 110 countries rely on CVSDude to deliver a highly
available solution for their mission-critical systems responsible for
activities from hosting code to providing collaboration and project management.
One
of Australia’s leading web design agencies depends on CVSDude to manage
team-based development of client portfolio projects, and to distribute
deliverables to Fortune 500 clients. Similarly, Zuora, a high-growth Software
as a Service leader in the online subscription billing space, uses CVSDude to
manage two China-based development teams and achieve rapid 4-week release
cycles.
“Customers pay us to guarantee that we can
provide 99.9 percent uptime, but we needed a rock-solid, reliable support
system in place so that we had the foundations to deliver on that promise,”
said Mark Bathie, CTO, director, and founder of CVSDude.
In order to offer a service that was fit for
managing mission-critical workloads, CVSDude required a platform that was not
only stable and affordable, but ensured scheduled, built-in release cycles.
“From the outset we knew we were looking for a
Linux solution -- we wouldn’t use anything else for what we are hosting -- but
we needed enterprise-ready Linux that would offer CVSDude and our customers
absolute confidence.”
SOLUTION
With more than 15 years of Linux experience,
CVSDude’s team was well aware of the cost efficiencies and security benefits
that were possible with a commercial application of Linux.
“You can’t compare code that has been developed,
reviewed, and tested by thousands of coders worldwide to closed-source code,
which is generally developed by a much smaller team. The former is going to be
far more resilient, secure, and more cost-effective than anything closed code
can offer,” said Bathie.
Working with its US data centre providers, in
2005 CVSDude selected Red Hat Enterprise Linux over a variety of Linux
alternatives, as the basis of its hosted solution. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
was deployed across the 24 servers that comprise CVSDude’s distributed
development environment.
The decision to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux was
based on Red Hat’s well-established reputation for enterprise-class Linux, its
prompt release cycles, affordability and first-class security.
“Our distributed development model allows for
richer functionality along with the flexibility to evolve our business more
rapidly. Enhancing that set-up with Red Hat Enterprise Linux just made good
business sense,” said Bathie.
BENEFITS
Since
deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux four years ago, CVSDude has acknowledged
that without the backing of a reliable, secure platform like Red Hat Enterprise
Linux, it couldn’t have delivered the level of service customers have come to
expect from its organisation. Bathie believes the business can’t afford not to
work with Red Hat.
“It stands to reason that customers use CVSDude
for the same reason we use Red Hat Enterprise Linux – it continues to provide a
superior level of service for a better price and with better security,” he
said.
The longer lifecycles of between six and 12 months have been of particular value to CVSDude, removing the need to change packages and enabling more effective planning for the future. According to Bathie, the guaranteed release cycles delivered with Red Hat Enterprise Linux are another way Red Hat has been good for business.
Today, CVSDude is continuing to grow
exponentially, adding some 100 customers a month to its service.
“Around 10 per cent of new customers are coming
to us from proprietary systems. People are looking to save money and benefit
from more feature rich systems, and are therefore looking to open source
solutions and to open source leader Red Hat,” said Bathie.
ABOUT
THE RED HAT ISV PROGRAM
The Red Hat ISV Partner Program includes over 2,200 vendors and over 3,000 applications certified on Red Hat technologies, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.
In February 2009, Red Hat announced that ISV partners are ensured through an Application Binary Interface (ABI) guarantee that their certified applications are capable of running under Red Hat virtualization technology as a result of Red Hat's unique ability to tightly couple the open source operating system Red Hat Enterprise Linux and hypervisor layers. Red Hat provides assurance that the kernel-level ABI won't change with major platform releases, allowing software and device drivers to continue running unchanged. Once certified on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, an application is also compatible from a user-space ABI perspective.
Red Hat
offers a broad ecosystem of certified applications, enabling expanded
flexibility and choice for customers.