Getting Ready for SaaS

With the current economic situation, more often than not, organizations would be evaluating various options available to get more for the buck. 2009 would be remembered as an year where almost everybody is keeping their fingers crossed and praying to finish the year unscathed.

Given the current scenario the SaaS model fits well with the plans of many organizations. It sits at a sweet spot between build versus buy and gives the desired economies of scale.

However, before getting onto the SaaS bandwagon there are an important set of questions that the organization needs to answer. The mindmap below tries to summarize them.

QuickTip: Setting HTTP Proxy for SVN

For setting the HTTP proxy for SVN the regular setting of http_proxy environment variable would not work.  i.e.

export http_proxy=http://my-proxy-server.com:8080/ would not work.

There is a “servers” file in svn which is present at the following location

Win : C:\Documents and Settings\hazrativ\Application Data\Subversion\servers

Linux: /etc/subversion/servers

Here you need to set the proxy server and port settings so that command line SVN can access the external world form the proxy. Uncomment and change the lines necessary

[global]
# http-proxy-exceptions = *.exception.com, www.internal-site.org
http-proxy-host = myproxy.us.com
http-proxy-port = 8080
# http-proxy-username = defaultusername
# http-proxy-password = defaultpassword
# http-compression = no
# http-auth-types = basic;digest;negotiate
# No http-timeout, so just use the builtin default.
# No neon-debug-mask, so neon debugging is disabled.
# ssl-authority-files = /path/to/CAcert.pem;/path/to/CAcert2.pem

If you get something like

svn: C:\Documents and Settings\hazrativ\Application Data\Subversion\servers:73:
Option expected

then it means that you have a space at the start of the property which you have un-commented. Make sure that there is no space in the beginning of the property in the servers file.

QuickLink : Way to set up an Agile Office

I found this extremely interesting and informative post on infoQ about setting up an agile office. This is very useful for any company who is planning to set up an Agile compliant office.

Cheers!