WANdisco integrates social networking with source code management

Application lifecycle management (ALM) firm WANdisco has launched a source code management package featuring Twitter-like social networking.

Called uberSVN, this new ALM system is based on WANdisco's enterprise Subversion package, itself built on the Apache Subversion open source software code version control system.

The major benefit WANdisco is highlighting in the new package is that it gives firms freedom to choose which open source or proprietary applications they want to use for ALM functions such as software build management, defect tracking, and project management.

UberSVN organises software development teams around the team members and their activities. Each software team has its own home page with team member profiles linked to the projects they are working on and which repositories their code is located in.

Project managers can subscribe to real-time updates of the Twitter-like feeds to get the latest information on how software projects are proceeding.

WANdisco chief executive David Richards pointed out that a big factor in the success of the firm was moving its software development team to Sheffield from London, due to "the lower cost of living and the high calibre of graduates from the city's two universities".

Richards said that there are three different flavours of uberSVN. The free version launched today, a Pro version will be available on 25 July and the Enterprise version will ship in November.

"The Pro version has additional enterprise features such as enhanced access control, reporting and backup, while the full enterprise version adds distributed ALM, better scalability and performance, failover and automatic backup," added Richards.