SaaS Specifications
Our Hosted Service is designed for reliability, scalability, and high performance. We have been in the hosting business for over a decade and EnterpriseWizard was developed specifically for a multi-tenant hosting environment.
If you are considering other SaaS vendors, we strongly recommend that you cover the technical topics below with them to find out how they compare. Most software vendors have been forced to offer a SaaS option in order to compete in the marketplace, but do not have the experience or program architecture to offer a reliable solution.
No Need for Client Software
No client software is needed to access EnterpriseWizard, as it is a 100% pure web-based product. All access is through a web browser, and the following browsers are supported.
- On Windows: IE 6.0, 7.0, 8.0+, FireFox 2.0, 3.0+, Safari 2.0, 3.0, 4.0+, Chrome 1.0+
- On Mac/Linux/Unix: FireFox 2.0, 3.0+, Safari 2.0, 3.0, 4.0+, Chrome 1.0+
All System Functionality and Modules are Included
The entire suite of EnterpriseWizard functionality is available with the hosted service and the base price includes all modules, except for support of additional languages. Integration with your backend systems is available, just as for the purchased product. There is an additional charge to enable the REST or Web Services API for real-time integration for hosted customers, but not for customers who host the application themselves. All other integration, such as Exchange and email integration, LDAP and single sign-on authentication, and rule-based scheduled imports are included in the base price.
Reliability from Experience
Our hosted service gives you reliability you can count on. We have developed a superior infrastructure based on our decade of experience offering hosted software solutions.We offer the best uptime guarantee in the business: 99.9% uptime during working hours. See our SLA for more details on the credits we offer if we fail to meet this target.
Our monitoring software is configured to alert us if average CPU utilization on a hosted server exceeds 25% or the load increases above 2.0. Performance metrics such as refresh times are harder to monitor because they depend upon the quality of the customer's internet connection and the knowledgebase configuration. We periodically run scalability and performance tests to verify that system performance is meeting our high standards.
Full Redundancy for Peace of Mind
Reliability results from the highest quality components and full redundancy:
- Knowledgebases are hosted on a blade server with one or more blades on the server kept free of load so that if a production blade fails, its load is automatically transferred to another blade.
- The blades are connected to a file server with RAID 10 hard drives and a hot-swap spare, and the entire file server is mirrored to a hotswap redundant file server.
- Redundant power supplies are used on the file servers and all other components that support redundant power.
- The Ethernet drop is redundant and configured for failover in the event that the co-location facility's router fails.
- Our primary router is redundant and configured for automatic failover.
- ECC RAM is used on all servers.
- All servers are protected by redundant firewalls.
- Active monitoring is employed on all critical components.
- As part of our contract with Bay Area Internet Solutions, they provide primary and secondary DNS servers, in addition to which we have our own dedicated DNS servers acting as backups.
Server Facilities
In the USA, our cloud servers are co-located at Bay Area Internet Solutions which provides:
- Carrier-class hosting facilities with customized design, expedient implementation, power and back-up power supplies, temperature and humidity controls and fire suppression systems
- 24x7 Technical Services available on a time-used basis to support equipment
- 24x7 onsite physical security, including security guards, motion detectors, security cameras, individually locking cabinets and cages and card-key access
- 24x7 monitoring of systems and services
- 24-hour access with security escort
For further information see the Virtual Tour of BayArea.net
Security
We conduct regular security audits of our hosted service and consistently receive high marks for the security of our infrastructure and program. The most recent security audit is always available, along with our complete Security Policy.
All access to hosted servers is encrypted through use of SSL technology. A firewall restricts server access, and for customers who elect to use a dedicated server, we will be happy to configure the firewall to only allow access from specific IP addresses.
Customers using a shared server can configure the KB to use a single sign-on capability restricted to their IP address, provided that their firewall allows the use of Active-X controls from designated servers.
Backups in Case of Emergency
We know your data may be mission critical. You can rest assured that you will have access to a range of backups to restore data in case of emergency.
By default, the system takes full backups of each knowledgebase every 24 hours. Knowledgbases can be configured for automatic backup as frequently as once per hour at an additional cost.
Backups are distributed to at least two separate online servers and an offsite facility at www.ibackup.com and can be retrieved immediately by our designated information security officers if the need arises. The data is encrypted with 256 bit AES encryption when stored offsite and is protected by SSL encryption during transfer.
The time taken to restore a system from backup depends upon the size of the knowledgebase. A typical KB is a few hundred megabytes in size and takes less than twenty minutes.
We always keep at least two spare servers available to which a KB can be restored in the event that one of the production servers dies.
No Bandwidth Limitations
There are no limitations on traffic or bandwidth. This policy has been unchanged for over 9 years, but we reserve the right to modify it if we notice excessive usage or abuse by a particular customer. If we ever limit traffic/bandwidth, we will also provide the option to buy additional bandwidth.
Reasonable Storage Space
Each company is allocated a pool of 100MB of storage space per staff user. For example, a company with 100 staff users would be allocated 10GB of space. Additional space may be purchased for $50 per 500MB per month. The space is calculated based on the compressed backup size of the customer KB.
Option to Move In House at Any Time
The full backup file format allows you to start using EnterpriseWizard as a hosted service and easily move to an on-premise solution on your own server at any time.
Unless your knoweldgebase is so large that it takes a long time to download, the entire transfer can easily be accomplished during the lunch hour because it takes less than 7 minutes to install EnterpriseWizard on your own server and a few clicks of the mouse to export the entire knowledgebase to your local hard drive and import it.
In addition to the backup's XML file format, data can be also be exported in ASCII and Excel formats for migration to other programs.
Thorough Product Testing Prior to Upgrades
Product changes are subject to the following stages of review and testing:
- Detailed functionality specification
- Design review of the proposed solution and code reviews
- Functionality testing by the developer
- A suite of over one thousand automated unit tests
- A suite of automated GUI tests
- A suite of manual tests by our QA department
- Internal production use
- Beta testing
- Release candidate testing
- Official release
