Case Studies > NetworkedAssets' Integration of JRebel to Enhance Development Productivity

NetworkedAssets' Integration of JRebel to Enhance Development Productivity

Company Size

11-200

Region

Europe

Country

Austria
Germany
Poland
Switzerland

Product

JRebel
Hudson
Sonar
Findbugs

Tech Stack

Java
JVM
Unix
Linux
Eclipse

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Digital Expertise
Productivity Improvements

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics
Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
Functional Applications - Remote Monitoring & Control Systems

Applicable Industries

Telecommunications

Applicable Functions

Business Operation
Product Research & Development

Use Cases

Predictive Maintenance
Remote Asset Management
Remote Control

Services

Software Design & Engineering Services
System Integration

About The Customer

NetworkedAssets is a seven-year-old company based in Berlin, with 26 employees working across Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Poland. The company focuses on integrating processes and data for telecom companies with large IP networks, serving over a million users. NetworkedAssets is also an Expert Partner of Atlassian. The company develops applications primarily on Java and the JVM, using Unix and Linux platforms. Their solutions include network management and monitoring, provisioning network resources, distributing resources over access points, automating network management tasks, and on-demand IPTV solutions. The development team consists of 22 developers who work as a distributed agile team, emphasizing continuous integration and code quality monitoring.

The Challenge

NetworkedAssets, a software house specializing in telecoms, faced challenges in streamlining their development processes to enhance efficiency and productivity. The team, working as a distributed agile unit, used the scrum template with two-week iterations. Continuous Integration was crucial, and they used Hudson for building applications and running unit tests after each commit. Despite these measures, the application redeploy time was significant, typically around 4-5 minutes, 2-3 times an hour, which added up and impacted productivity. The application, developed in Eclipse and built with Maven, included multiple frameworks like Spring, Hibernate, and Apache Camel, and was deployed on Apache Tomcat. The team needed a solution to reduce the redeploy time and improve their development velocity.

The Solution

NetworkedAssets decided to integrate JRebel into their development process to address the issue of significant redeploy times. JRebel allowed developers to change code or framework resources and instantly view and test their changes without delays. The application, which included frameworks like Spring, Hibernate, and Apache Camel, was developed in Eclipse and built with Maven, where JRebel integrated directly with the build. The app, consisting of four modules and many libraries, was deployed on Apache Tomcat. By using JRebel, the team could significantly reduce the redeploy time, enhancing their development productivity. The team ran metrics to compare the velocity across iterations with and without JRebel. They performed eight sprints without JRebel and six sprints with it. The results showed a significant improvement in team velocity when using JRebel.

Operational Impact

The integration of JRebel allowed developers to make changes and instantly view and test them without delays, significantly reducing redeploy times.
The application, developed in Eclipse and built with Maven, included multiple frameworks and was deployed on Apache Tomcat, making it a complex environment where JRebel's impact was notable.
The team ran metrics to compare the velocity across iterations with and without JRebel, showing a significant improvement in productivity.
The use of JRebel enabled the team to streamline their development processes, enhancing efficiency and productivity.
The statistical analysis conducted by the team confirmed the significant improvement in team velocity with JRebel, validating its effectiveness.

Quantitative Benefit

A 40% increase in team velocity was observed when using JRebel.
The redeploy time, which was typically around 4-5 minutes, 2-3 times an hour, was significantly reduced with JRebel.