Apache Archiva vs. AWS CodeArtifact

Well suited for small organizations to medium-sized teams/organizations. Apache Archiva is well suited for:

• It acts as a central repository/proxy of the artifacts generated and used by the teams.
• It provides control on which open source repositories can be utilized by the team.
• Saves network bandwidth by reducing outbound traffic.

Apache Archiva is less appropriate for organizations where immediate support/bug resolutions are required.

We have a small team with limited resources and it worked well for us. Hence I can conclude that AWS Code Artifact are well suited for organizations which have limited resources in terms of hardware and access to administrators for setting up artifact repository in-house. AWS Code Artifact is also suited particularly well for organization(s) which are already using AWS Services/Infrastructure (eg. EC2) . It works quite well with existing AWS services and completes the gap which existed in AWS offering for quite some time. Organizations can move their entire DevOps toolchain and infrastructure to Amazon. It is less appropriate for organization(s) which rely on artifacts like Debian, C/C++, Go etc as AWS does not support those fully.

• It's an open source project and therefore saves cost.
• It allows exchange of artifacts/libraries between different teams.
• It allows managing internal and external repositories with ease.

• Code Artifact is a cloud based artifact repository so there is no installation required.
• Code Artifact comes with out of the box security. Using RBAC and encryption
• Total cost of usage is less than setting up in-house servers
• It is accessible from any where.. so no additional network setup is required.

• Muti-tenancy was hard to achieve.
• UI can be improved. Its seems bit dated.
• It is a bit tricky to setup.

• CodeArtifact does not support packages like debian. It will be nice to see them support that.
• Does not provide security scanning of the packages
• Lacks support for third party CI/CD toolchain like Jenkins

• Apache Archiva is a great choice for organizations with a limited budget.
• Alternatives are expensive to acquire Archiva comes offers REST API(s) which allows the creation of customized UI.
• With Apache Archiva, it is easy to manage the remote proxy repositories.
• RBAC helps with managing user access to the repository.
• Configuration can be achieved using UI and stored in archiva.xml.
• Backup of configuration is quite simple.

AWS CodeArtifact is an excellent choice for organization(s) which are looking to move their infrastructure and devops toolchain to Amazon. It is very useful for teams/organizations on limited budget or do not want to take on infrastructure and maintenance costs associated with the artifact repository. Other software solutions require resources for setting up and need ongoing maintenance.

• The impact of Apache Archiva on ROI has been positive. Since it is open source. It is free.
• It has allowed teams to store artifacts centrally, thus leading to a reduced need for multiple servers
• Security audits can be easily performed on the artifacts.

• Overall CodeArtifact has positive ROI on the our team. We had limited budget for procurement of server/administrators. With CodeArtifact we were able to get some savings.
• We were able to deliver faster hence customers were quite happy. That led to customer satisfaction
• We didnt have to invest on maintaining network infrastructure/uptime and security. That saved us quite a bit of hassle and funds.