Ongoing Maintenance & Support.Respondents spent on average 87 hours each month on in-house technical support, including installing plugins, configuring user permissions, or upgrading software. These activities were described as "not productive" or even "detrimental" for developers trying to focus on core product development.

Data Backup and Recovery. Performing regular, offsite backups of critical source code is essential. Not surprisingly, the average respondent took 45 hours each month backing up and recovering project data. Yet even the most disciplined admin can let backups slip through the cracks during busy times, not because they don't value their own code, but because taking off-site redundant backups is a laborious and detail-oriented task.

Total Cost of Ownership

Before outsourcing to Codesion, respondents used to spend some 3,000 hours per year (250 hours per month) maintaining in-house source control and issue tracking systems. This usually involves a system administrator earning conservatively $90,000 per year ($52.17 per hour with overheads), costing $155,460 each year in labor time. With hardware costs, this adds up to $160,000 per year.

SaaS Economies of Scale

In comparison, by outsourcing to Codesion, customers identified the following key value drivers:

• More than 90% total cost savings, with low upfront costs due to monthly subscription or discounted annual payments
• Initial implementation costs are virtually nil - setting up a new account required simple configuration of projects and user access through web-based software and uploading existing project data to the Codesion system.
• Secure multi-site access and an easy way to share and collaborate on projects with clients and teammates outside of the corporate firewall
• Fully-maintained, always upgraded software: Codesion administrators carefully bug-check new software releases for potential incompatibilities before upgrading the software
• Improved redundancy & security: All Codesion projects are backed up every 10-minutes to multiple datacenters, ensuring that customer data is always secure and recoverable

What Were the Concerns?

SecurityThe main concern of all prospective SaaS customers is for the security of their data. For this reason, Codesion has built multi-tiered data redundancy in SAS-70 Compliant datacenters, comprehensive security solutions, and issued a Code of Conduct. All monitored by full-time dedicated staff and delivered to thousands of leading organizations, 24x7. Customers can opt to mirror project histories to on-premise servers on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. All data is backed up to the latest ten minutes, and archives compiled and stored every 24 hours. Interestingly, the #1 reason why our customers adopted Codesion was for "risk-management & data security" (21% of responders).

Control. By outsourcing to a third-party provider, you give up certain controls such as root-level access, the ability to reconfigure or move projects around at will or install your own plugins. Fortunately, by serving thousands of customer requests over time, Codesion has deeply modified and integrated our products and redesigned our interface so that we can accommodate 95% of customer needs.

Integration. As customers expand and utilize a range of in-house and hosted tools, it becomes more important to integrate them via a single source control platform. With Codesion, customers can integrate Subversion with Trac or FogBugz tickets, leverage web hooks or even authenticate with your LDAP or Active Directory (by request).