While the software configuration management (SCM) space isn’t known for lots of excitement, it has been undergoing a quiet revolution. For starters, developers and organizations have embracing open source options like Subversion and Git. Forrester analyst Dave West notes, “I’ve seen a migration away from complex and expensive software configuration management solutions to Subversion and other open-source solutions.” He adds, “These tools are easier to work with, of course cheaper, and are gaining popularity.”
DVCS has also been growing in popularity, particularly for geographically dispersed application development teams. With the distributed model, “a team in Ohio and Ireland can work in two separate repositories during the day and let their work sync over night,” explains Eric Sink, founder of SCM vendor SourceGear. “In enterprise speak, these tools don’t just scale up, they scale out, too.”