GitHub Adds To Online Service Capabilities In A Bid For Business Developers

GitHub, the popular version control repository and Internet hosting service for developers, is expanding the range of online developer services as the company makes a play for more business users.

GitHub is bringing to GitHub.com some of the more advanced capabilities already offered in the company's GitHub Enterprise on-premise/private cloud software, including SAML single sign-on, automated provisioning and de-provisioning, and a 99.95 percent uptime guarantee.

"We're really expanding upon our business offering [and] provinding this next set of enterprise features," said Connor Sears, GitHub's senior director of product design, in an interview with CRN. "It's a doubling-down on our direction."

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The company is also offering 24-hour, five-days-a-week support with a response time of less than eight hours.

GitHub.com provides programmers with an ecosystem of development, collaboration and project management tools and services. While it began as a place for developers to collaborate on open source development projects, it is increasingly used by businesses as a key component of their software development practices. One million organizations are currently working with GitHub and its offerings, according to Sears.

GitHub launched a partner program last year for systems integrators and development shops that work with the site.

GitHub has seen growing demand for online services as Software-as-a-Service computing becomes more widely adopted for developing software and putting it into production, Sears said. While a lot of businesses use GitHub Enterprise, they are increasingly looking for an alternative to the necessary capital expenditures for hardware and related expenses associated with on-premise systems.

GitHub.com already provides developers with unlimited private repositories, team and user level permissions, pull requests, code review and project management tools.

With the new features and functionality, development teams can more easily scale their projects while spending less time on administrative tasks, according to the company.

GitHub.com is $21 per user, per month. The company also provides free plans for users who don't require unlimited private repositories.