When developers sit far from the server that holds your code, every routine task takes longer, and one outage can stop everyone.
Those delays compound: wasted time, interrupted releases, frustrated customers.
Everyone who regularly works with your source code, across all locations.
The full cost to your business: salary, benefits, equipment and overheads.
The system your developers use to store and share code.
Developers in the same location as the server already get fast access, so only those further away gain time back. Protection from outages and the Gerrit saving still count for everyone. Protection from outages still counts for everyone.
Measured as the time a request takes to reach the server and come back. Distance is only part of it: network routing, VPNs, congestion and link quality all add delay, so teams the same distance away can see very different times. Teams in the same office typically see about 20 milliseconds. If you are unsure, your network team can measure this.
Larger codebases take longer to download in full, so distance hurts more.
Active MultiSite keeps a live, writable copy of your code at every site. Developers work with a nearby server, and every site automatically stays in sync. That changes three things:
Developers fetch the latest changes, share their own and download full copies of the code many times a week. With a local server, each of these takes local-office time instead of long-distance time.
$328
per distant developer per year, from 63 seconds less waiting each day
Not included
None of your developers are set as far from the code server
With one central server, an outage stops every team at once. With several live sites, developers keep working if one location goes offline, and it catches up automatically when it returns.
$414
per developer per year, from about 5.5 hours of protected working time
For Gerrit, Active MultiSite replaces layers of replication tooling with one system, so your platform team spends less time keeping multiple sites healthy.
$49
per developer per year
Not included
This saving applies to Gerrit only
Network waiting time for one distant developer, with a 3.5 GB codebase. The last column adds up a typical day.
| Task | From 200 ms away | From a local server | Time saved each time | Times a day | Saved per day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Getting the latest changes | 1.00 s | 0.10 s | 0.90 s | 2 | 1.80 s |
| Sharing changes | 0.60 s | 0.06 s | 0.54 s | 2 | 1.08 s |
| Downloading a full copy of the code | 5 min 34 s | 33.4 s | 5 min 00 s | 0.2 | 60.1 s |
| Time saved per distant developer each day | 63.0 s | ||||
These two factors have the biggest effect on the estimate. Each box shows the yearly value if your distant developers worked at that distance, on a codebase of that size. Everything else stays as you entered it above.
200 milliseconds
Often between continents
300 milliseconds
Often across the world
About 3.5GB
Typical large codebase
About 50GB
Very large codebase
The large figure is the yearly value for your whole organization, and the smaller figure is the value per developer. The highlighted box matches your answers above. Select a different box to use that distance and codebase size in the calculator.
The estimate uses research benchmarks for how often developers work with their code and how long those tasks take at different distances. Only the details you enter above change.
We compare how long routine tasks take from a distant site against the same tasks from a local server (about 20 milliseconds away), then value the time saved at your hourly developer cost. Only developers far from the code server gain this time, so the result is scaled by the share you enter.
| Times per day a developer fetches the latest changes | 2 |
|---|---|
| Round trips to the server each time | 5 |
| Times per day a developer shares their changes | 2 |
| Round trips to the server each time | 3 |
| Full downloads of the codebase per developer per day | 0.2 (about one a week) |
| Time for a full 3.5 GB download: local, 200 ms, 300 ms | 33s, 334s, 501s |
| Time for a full 50 GB download: local, 200 ms, 300 ms | 496s, 4,920s, 7,440s |
| Time saved per distant developer each day, with your settings | 63 seconds |
| Share of developers far from the code server, with your settings | 100% |
We value the working time a single-site setup loses to facility outages, which Active MultiSite avoids by keeping other sites available. This applies to every developer, because an outage at a single central server stops local and distant teams alike.
| Facility outages per year | 2.4 |
|---|---|
| Average outage length | 138 minutes |
| Working time protected per developer each year | 5.5 hours |
Based on the reduced administration effort of Active MultiSite compared with other ways of running Gerrit across several sites. This saving applies to Gerrit only.
| Administration saving per developer each year | $49 |
|---|
| Working days per year | 250 |
|---|---|
| Working hours per day | 8 |
| Hourly developer cost, with your settings | $75.00 |
Benchmarks: BlueOptima, Comprehensive Network Transport, Git Operations and Developer Economic Model. Results are estimates for planning purposes, not a guarantee of savings.