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White Paper: Enterprisewizard CRM – Grid Computing
INTRODUCTION
It is widely acknowledged that SaaS-based solutions for CRM and other areas of Business Process Automation have the potential to revolutionize not just the software industry, but the entire industrial sector since they enable small to mid-sized companies to deploy enterprise-class software infrastructures at minimal initial cost and so compete more effectively with Fortune 500 corporations.
However, while the SaaS model lowers the barrier to entry, it creates a number of new challenges and costs that affect customers and VAR’s. This paper analyzes these issues and describes technologies by which they can be reduced or eliminated.
SaaS CHALLENGES
SaaS products face unique challenges in the areas of Upgrades, Scalability, Security, Reliability, Setup/Configuration and Backup, but before reviewing them, lets briefly recap why these issues are less significant for traditional software serving single customer from behind their firewall.
Upgrades – The system is upgraded at the time most convenient for a single customer.
Scalability – Traditional software serves a single customer and simply needs a single server powerful enough to address that company’s needs.
Reliability – Traditional hot-swap redundancy or clustering technology adequately address the needs of a single company and there are significant portions of each week, or even each day when the system can be taken offline for hardware and OS maintenance/upgrades.
Security – The customer administrators simply have full access to the entire system.
Setup and Configuration – Setup times of several days are perfectly acceptable, in fact the effective setup time may take weeks when the system is provisioned on specially ordered hardware.
Backup – When there is only one customer on a system, there are no problems with simply restoring the entire system from a database backup.
As detailed below, the situation is more challenging when CRM is offered as a SaaS service.
Scalability The failure of the old ASP model demonstrated that offering software as a service is only economically viable if multiple customers can be centrally managed and hosted.
This requires a hardware/hosting infrastructure that can dynamically allocate additional compute resources as the customer base grows. However, there is no point in allocating additional machines without grid-aware software that scales across multiple servers without bottlenecks such as application/database locking.
In brief, offering a SaaS solution requires both a SaaS-compliant software and hardware infrastructure.
Reliability
As multiple customers are served by a centrally managed SaaS application, the system will be accessed by users on different, international time zones and must therefore be accessible 24/7, yet hardware failures are inevitable. This requires a software infrastructure that can dynamically and automatically switch between physical machines without losing customer data or interrupting service for longer than a few minutes.
Upgrades
Software upgrades are managed by the software provider and apply to all customers on that server. During the course of the upgrade, which may last for several hours, the server is either entirely offline or unavailable or write operations this can present a severe problem if it occurs during a busy period for the customer and some customers have calendar-based busy periods that include weekends. The SaaS infrastructure must therefore be flexible enough to schedule upgrades for different customers at different times.
Security
The need to host multiple customers on the same server heightens the security issues that are common to web applications. Not only must the application be secure against traditional hackers, there must be full isolation of data between customers on the same server, sharing the same CPUs, memory and database. This requirement also precludes the customer from operations that depend upon direct database/OS access.
Setup and Configuration
The primary selling point of SaaS is the low cost of entry; so setting up the application for a new customer must be fast and highly automated.
Backup
Some customers are inevitably going to make mistakes and delete or damage critical data, requiring that their system be reverted to an earlier backup.
This must be doable without reverting all other customer’s data that resides within the same database. Backups therefore cannot simply rely on database backup technology, but must backup each customer separately. Further, the systems must continue to be accessible during creation of these backups and restoration of one backup must not affect other customers.
ENTERPRISEWIZARD CRM
This section, details how the combination of EnterpriseWizard CRM with the 3tera grid infrastructure addresses each of the challenges detailed above.
Scalability
Scalability depends upon executing multiple processes in parallel, i.e. pipelining.
EnterpriseWizard CRM scales across multiple servers on the grid and automatically assigns transaction-data in Java to spread the load evenly across CPU’s to optimize the use of computing resources and ensure that service levels are maintained.
The result is that the base system can handle over 60,000 records per hour and performance increases by over 80% with each doubling of the number or processors – a level of scalability that can easily handle the demands of the world’s largest corporations.
Reliability
A grid-computing environment provides full redundancy, so that if one physical machine dies, the OS instance is automatically started on another and full service is restored in a matter of minutes. The data itself is copied across multiple physical servers so that no information is lost, even in the event of a catastrophic failure of one or two machines.
If a server dies, the queuing manager automatically re-routes its tasks to the remaining servers. Additional machines may be added to the grid and activated without affecting running processes, so hardware may be replaced, repaired and upgraded without downtime.
Security
E-Grid CRM builds on the billion dollar investment by firms such as IBM and Sun in J2EE for
enterprise systems and been independently certified as free of security holes.
Dedicated virtual servers, with full redundancy can be provisioned in the space of 30 minutes for customers who want direct database or ssh/sftp access to their system, all without having to provision additional physical hardware.
Upgrades
The availability of dedicated virtual servers allows customers to schedule upgrades at the time most convenient for them, rather than the time chosen relying on CRM vendor.
Setup and Configuration
New instances of EnterpriseWizard CRM applications can be provisioned in a matter of minutes and customized online.
Backup
The backup facility allows automated backups of application instances to be scheduled at any time and not only does the system remain online and fully operational during backups, but the backup time of each instance may be individually scheduled.
ADAPTIVE TECHNOLOGY
The greatest driving factor behind the adoption of SaaS is speed of deployment, but rapid deployment is worthless unless the product meets the customer’s specific requirements.
EnterpriseWizard CRM provides robust out-of-box functionality and unlike other systems, it is built on a 100% adaptive technology core named SaaSWizard that dramatically reduces the time it takes to address customer specific requirements. The SaaSWizard modules available for functionality extensions are summarized below.
>> Core Functionality:
Alerts and Escalation
Attached Files
Activity Logs and Reports
Audit Trail and History
Automatic Hotlinks
Automatic Login
Automatic Reports
Asset Discovery and WMI Support
Business Rules Engine
Business Rules Wizard
Dashboards
Database Search/Sorting
Email Hotlinks
Full Text Search
Graphical Charts
Graphical Workflow
HTML Editor
Instant Messaging
Incoming E-mail Integration
Interactive FAQ
Interactive Reports
>> Customization and API’s:
Custom Tables
Custom Tables Relationships
Custom Interface
Custom Look and Feel
Custom Data Views
Custom Data Fields
Custom Choice Tables
Custom Graphic Images
Custom Fonts
Database Schema
Drag&Drop Customization
Field Types
Import / Export
Multiple Custom Brandings
Multi-Tab Input Forms
On-line Customization
REST API
Scripts API
Web Services API
>> Permissions and Access Control:
Integrated Chat
Issue Tracking and Management Field Level Permissions
Multi-language Support LDAP Integration
Outgoing E-mail Integration Password Configuration
Saved Searches Record Level Permissions
Self Registration User Groups
Single Sign On Web Interface for Users
Standard Solutions Web Interface for Staff
Ticket Links
Trend Charts and Reports
SUMMARY
The combination of a grid infrastructure and a CRM software suite architected to exploit its
capabilities gives customers the benefits of a SaaS service coupled with the advantages of
on-premise software for security, direct database access and the timing of upgrades. The
result is an enterprise-class CRM system and infrastructure at a commodity price point.
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Complete product information, as well as demos and free CRM software trial downloads, are available at http://www.enterprisewizard.com.
White papers on customer relationship management software are available at http://www.enterprisewizard.com/white.htm.
Please peruse our case studies at http://www.enterprisewizard.com/success.htm to read about our customers’ success with customer relationship management software.
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ABOUT ENTERPISEWIZARD INC.:
With headquarters in Silicon Valley and resellers worldwide, EnterpriseWizard, Inc. is the leading provider of powerful, affordable, and easily deployed 100% web-based business process automation (BPA) solutions for organizations of all sizes.
Our company has attracted customers from industries with vastly different needs, ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies such as Chevron, Merrill Lynch, and NEC since we were founded in 1991.
Based on its award-winning predecessor product SupportWizard, EnterpriseWizard CRM is a top-rated, out-of-the-box J2EE solution for issue tracking, helpdesk, customer support, sales, email, and marketing automation. Organizations can get up and running quickly with its default templates, and easily enhance and extend the application through an intuitive browser-based interface. Clients have adapted the system for Sarbanes-Oxley and Government Regulation, Project and Time Management, Change Management, and other specialized applications.
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