Accelerating game development: Cirata MultiSite Plus boosts productivity

A globally renowned video game organization were operating with a large number of Subversion nodes across the globe.

• Globally distributed teams in a large number of locations, difficulty to align projects.
  • Coordination challenges: Teams working across multiple time zones were facing significant coordination challenges.
    
    
• Slow SCM performance.
  • Version control delays: Slow Source Control Management (SCM) resulted in delays when checking in and checking out code, merging branches, and resolving conflicts.
  • Non-local interaction delays: Where developers were needing to access SVN data from a source not geographically close, their delays increased exponentially.
  • Developer frustration: Developers had become frustrated with sluggish performance.

• Barrier to meeting production deadlines
  • Delays in development: Delays in the development process, whether due to SCM performance, coordination challenges, or other factors, were starting to impact production deadlines.
  • Dependency management: Managing dependencies between different teams or components was challenging, this led to delays if one part of the project was not ready on time.
  • Tool efficiency: The efficiency and effectiveness of development tools directly impact developer productivity.
  • Workflow interruptions: Any interruptions due to technical issues or slow systems were found to reduce the time developers spend on actual coding.

• Current home-grown SCM syncing approach is inefficient and prone to issues.
  • Lack of scalability: Relying on a home-grown Subversion syncing solution made changes to the node count incredibly complex.
  • Reliability concerns: These solutions were not found to be as reliable as the purpose built alternative, leading to more frequent downtime or data sync errors.
  • Maintenance burden: Maintaining and updating a custom synced SVN ecosystem was found to be resource intensive, diverting valuable time and resources away from core development activities.

• Maintenance and/or disaster recovery events take too long, can take between 1-2 days.
  • Downtime impact: Long maintenance or disaster recovery times had significantly impacted productivity, as developers were unable to access Subversion system during these periods.
  • Data loss risk: Extended recovery times increase the risk of data loss or corruption, which can have severe consequences for the project.

We installed Cirata Subversion MultiSite Plus at 20 sites distributed around the globe.

• This interconnected global infrastructure unified all development teams, enabling the organization to collaborate seamlessly across all geographical locations.
• MultiSite Plus’s selective replication groups allowed administrators to easily position repository replicas as needed.
• This tailor-made repository replication software freed the team from the inefficiencies of custom SVN syncing scripts, allowing them to focus on meeting project deadlines.
• The implementation of Cirata MultiSite Plus also enhanced system robustness. During downtime events impacting one site, all other sites remained operational and active, ensuring continuous productivity.

• The distribution of SVN repositories into ‘replication groups’ allowed the gaming organization admins to ensure replicas of repositories were where they needed to be.
• This provided developers with near-local SVN interaction times for all interactions.
• This expected 3-5% reduction in wait time resulted in an estimated cost saving equal to the average annual cost of 23 full-time software engineers.

The gaming organization commended the functionality of the product in the face of a system down event. Allowing developers to continue to work while the admin team are resolving a high profile issue is highly valuable. The ability to perform routine maintenance to the environment without the need for costly and impactful downtime across all development teams was also a key benefit for the team.