This paper examines the key issues associated with geographically distributed software development and presents a new and innovative solution: the MKS Federated Server Architecture, or FSA for short.

The FSA, developed by MKS, uses advanced and reliable inter-server caching technology, building on the widespread advancements in network availability and reliability. The result is a solution that has numerous advantages over the outdated replication paradigm. These advantages include:

• Real time collaboration among global development teams, keeping everyone instantly informed of the project's progress
• Fewer administrative requirements
• Shorter project delivery times due to reduced conflict resolution activities
• Enables development organizations to deliver more value to their business instead of managing project inefficiencies and code collisions