WANdisco

History

The name WANdisco is an acronym for wide area network distributed computing. Initially offering a replication solution for distributed teams using the Concurrent Versions System (CVS), this was expanded to include Apache Subversion with SVN MultiSite Plus in 2006, Git with Git MultiSite in 2013 and Gerrit with Gerrit MultiSite in 2014.

In 2012, WANdisco acquired AltoStor, and entered the Big Data market with its Non-Stop Hadoop product. AltoStor's founders, Dr. Konstantin Shvachko and Jagane Sundar, joined WANdisco as part of the acquisition, and helped develop the company's next generation Hadoop product released in 2015, WANdisco Fusion.

Technology

WANdisco's Distributed Coordination Engine (DConE) is the shared component for WANdisco clustering products. The DConE system allows multiple instances of the same application to operate on independent hardware without sharing any resources. All of the application servers are kept in synchronisation by DConE regardless of whether the servers are on the same LAN or globally separated and accessible only over a wide area network (WAN).

WANdisco's replication technology was the work of Yeturu Aahlad who had previously worked for Sun, Netscape and IBM and was involved in developing the CORBA Framework. Aahlad theorized a model for effective Active replication over a WAN. In the development of DConE, WANdisco has taken the Paxos algorithm as a baseline and added significant innovations relevant to mission-critical, high transaction volume distributed environments.

WANdisco provides replicated products for CVS, Apache Subversion, Git, Gerrit, Apache Hadoop, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform. In addition support, consultancy and training services are offered.

The company's website lists companies such as AT&T, APC, Avaya, Bally Technologies, Thales Group, Verisign, Sun Microsystems, Honda, NTT, Intel, John Deere, Disney, Symantec, Barclays, Merrill Lynch and Motorola.

IBM OEM

In April 2016, WANdisco announced that IBM had signed a deal to OEM WANdisco Fusion. The deal allows IBM to rebrand Fusion as "IBM Big Replicate" and plays an important role in IBMs Big Data and Cloud Computing strategy including movement of data between on-premises software and Cloud

Defunct products

In 2011 WANdisco announced uberSVN, a deployment of Apache Subversion which included a web based management console and the ability to add additional application lifecycle management features. The uberSVN download was available through mid-2013.

Open source contributions

In September 2013 WANdisco announced it is an official sponsor of the UC Berkeley AMPLab, a five-year collaborative effort at the University of California, Berkeley.

Hadoop

WANdisco has one Apache Hadoop committer on staff: Jagane Sundar. In February 2013 WANdisco released a free distribution of Hadoop containing additional components developed by WANdisco.

Subversion

WANdisco was involved in the Apache Subversion open source project from 2008 through 2015. They employed several contributors to work on the Subversion project during that time.

Server and client binaries

WANdisco provides Subversion binary downloads for Windows, Debian, CentOS, Solaris, Ubuntu, Mac OS X and RHEL via its website. These binaries use the default package management system for each Linux distribution.

Project announcements

In December 2010, WANdisco announced its intention to develop some features for the Subversion project, specifically aimed at improving branching and merging functionality.

The Apache Foundation and some Subversion developers said the announcement contained unfounded claims and insinuations about community involvement and the lack of development on these features. According to Apache, these features were already being worked on at the time. David Richards from WANdisco clarified this position to the Subversion community and followed up by announcing WANdisco's sponsorship and ongoing support for the work of the Apache Software Foundation.