CollabNet Delivers Software Projects Worldwide

Software development often requires highly specialized knowledge, and it is often difficult to find qualified individuals. The tools and technologies used in software development have also gotten quite complex, and a number of large companies are now seeking offshore developers and distributed environments that can quickly adapt to these changes. The downward trend of project expenditures that has plagued the United States due to the sour economy and the resulting IT job losses are also now affecting how companies develop applications and impacting every software development decision in large companies.

By and large, the collaborative software environment arena is relatively new, especially the notion of exposing source code to outside developers. Many companies that are working with offshore development contractors, for example, depend on traditional source-code development methods, so they are hesitant to embrace distributed development over the Internet. Many of these companies fail to take advantage of the Internet as an environment to share intellectual property and collaborate on development projects across geographies, due mainly to the range of language and cultural constraints that make it difficult to rely on traditional methods.

MARIO MOREJON Technical Editor

CollabNet's SourceCast offers a better alternative. SourceCast is an Internet-based project management environment where people can securely communicate and share source code. The product's distributed environment eliminates many of the cultural issues plaguing offshore projects by enabling direct and intelligent collaboration. Using SourceCast, companies can expand offshore development work by allowing international workers to directly contribute to projects.

Another benefit is CollabNet's international presence. The company has an offshore development center in Chennai, India, staffed by engineers and engineering leads who are available for development work via the SourceCast interface.

SourceCast provides six preset roles that project administrators can designate to users, allowing them to manage overseas or domestic workers. The role options are Content Viewer, Observer, Content Developer, Developer, Project Owner and Domain Administrator. Administrators can also add customized roles.

The need to customize roles is purely based on where a company's workforce is located. For instance, companies that work with international developers might want to tightly control the scope of a project while restricting offshore developers to a small portion of the source code. The SourceCast system is highly configurable, so administrators have numerous security options. Even within a single project, developers can have different levels of security. Common sense dictates how the source code should be secured.

CollabNet's projects are priced based on type of licensing. Private projects are priced based on the number of users and can vary significantly. For large-scale closed applications, for example, the project is based on a per-user basis, while open-source projects are priced on a monthly rate. The company sees typical costs ranging from $100,000 to $1 million.

One thing CRN Test Center engineers did not like was the manner in which developers write code under SourceCast, as it can add to security headaches. The system is secure, but developers must do their work on their local machines before uploading it to a CVS server in SourceCast. This leaves a window opened for hackers to add malicious code, so code review is critical in this environment. Managers should always have a trusted technical adviser who can analyze every line of code in an application.

SourceCast is an effective tool for managing cross-border development projects, but because it is an online service intended only to be used by solution providers and end users and is not resold, CollabNet does not offer a channel program.

CHANNEL PROGRAM SNAPSHOTS
> COLLABNET SOURCECAST ENVIRONMENT
COMPANY: CollabNet
Brisbane, Calif.
(650) 228-2500
www.collab.net
TECH RATING:

Note: Vendors can earn up to five stars for technical merit and five for their channel program. If the average of these two scores is four stars or greater, the product earns CRN Test Center Recommended status.