Impulse Point — SafeConnect (2016–2017)
Impulse Point made SafeConnect, a network access control product deployed as a 1U rackmount server at client sites. Day one set the tone:
"Here's a Dell workstation with 16G and 1TB drive. Configure it any way you want."
An hour later: Kubuntu Linux, all dev tools, company repos cloned and building locally. A Linux geek's dream.
Stack
- Frontend: Angular 1.x (predates the modern TypeScript-based Angular)
- Backend: Java/WAR deployed on Tomcat (RHEL 7 packaged version)
- Build: Atlassian Bamboo, producing RPM packages hosted on a public RPM repo
- Deployment: Client sites updated via standard
yum upgrade
SVN → Git Migration
When I joined in 2016, Impulse Point's code was in Subversion. They wanted to move to Git and hosted Atlassian Bitbucket. Having done svn→git migrations previously at Syniverse, I was a natural fit for the task.
I wrote a bash script that walked each of their 130+ repositories through the full migration process automatically. One script, 130 repos, done.
The real win wasn't just the migration itself — it was gaining access to the entire ecosystem of Git-based tooling that the rest of the industry had already moved to. Nobody was building integrations for SVN anymore. And even git's competition like perforce & mercurial are all-but-forgotten now.