Architectural Overview

The evolution of the internet, according to Wikipedia, has occurred in distinct phases, each with increased capacity and capability: Web 1.0 was read-only, Web 2.0 was read-write, and now Web 3.0 is read-write-execute – enabling fully fledged applications to exploit its power. Rich internet applications having all the features and functionality of traditional client-server programs can process the user interface on web browsers and perform mission critical functions and large scale data management on application servers. By being everywhere, the internet allows clients and servers located anywhere to interact, without constraint, offering immense business and technical advantages.

To fully exploit these advantages, however, needs a new type of software. On the internet, devices communicate without dedicated connections, with variable network delays, with potential security risks, and often with thousands of concurrent users. Many of the technical challenges have been addressed and solved by organizations such as Google, MySQL, IBM, Apache and others. FlitePlan is one of the first products to deliver robust, scalable, secure and flexible business solutions using these technologies.

FlitePlan directly represents business organizations, processes and resources in software, so is easily understood by business people. Organizations model how groups, companies, branches, divisions and even individuals are organized; purchase, service, manufacturing, finance, sales and other business processes describe how work is done among organizations; resources are the products, assets, money et cetera used and produced by these processes. Standard FlitePlan applications support most common business functions, and can easily be extended to satisfy specialised needs. Partial open source licensing enables business analysts and programmers to adapt these applications to particular business needs without compromising performance, security or integrity.

Business processes change the financial and operational value of resources. These changes are recorded by FlitePlan in a data warehouse having a dimension or axis for each aspect of their value. A powerful business-intelligence report generator enables management, financial and operational information to be accurately and efficiently summarised in formats familiar to users. For example, income statement, balance sheet, accounts receivable and payable, inventory and work in process and other financial reports are exactly as they would be from traditional accounting system. However, a data warehouse is not limited to financial data and allows reports having physical values for multiple organizations at many locations over long periods. Sales quantities, inventory balances, shipping tonnages, employment hours, et cetera are examples of non-financial values that are useful in business. An integrated charting tool can present this data in most popular graphical styles.

Existing databases are accessible to FlitePlan applications via an object-relational layer which supports most modern databases. Being sophisticated, it allows transactions across multiple databases of different types, so is able to integrate and eventually supplant legacy applications without the risks of a ‘big bang’ changeover. FlitePlan software can also access third party web services such as satellite imaging and mapping, product data, customer credit rating, foreign exchange, shipping and other data useful to business applications. Organizations that continue to spend money on monolithic ERP applications introduced in the Y2K era may benefit by evaluating this fast and adaptive Web 3.0 alternative.

Hosted on the internet, FlitePlan applications are truly global, and can help integrate the activities of customers, suppliers, employees and other partners wherever they are. No special action is required for a supplier in Singapore to deal with a customer in Seattle and with a banker in London. FlitePlan’s workflow management ensures that documents are routed in correct sequence to the appropriate people in real time. This means, for example, that a request for quotation by a potential customer anywhere in the world is immediately presented to a salesperson for response. Process steps can also be delegated to customers, suppliers and other external bodies to improve service and accelerate workflow. Finally, internationalisation of a FlitePlan application is simply a matter of translating simple labels into the target language(s) – the web browser determines which language and date/number format to use.

These advantages are available to most organizations with no additional investment – almost every company and many individuals have access to the internet – and most use some form of corporate database. You probably already have the hardware and software required to run your FlitePlan applications. However you may choose to host the applications using a service provider offering 24x7 secure computing over the internet. Such services are offered at little or no cost by internet savvy companies such as Amazon, Google and IBM, enabling your company to entirely eliminate the cost and risk of its database, operating system, network, antivirus and other software, thus rendering your server rooms, power supplies, computers, backup libraries and support staff unnecessary.

The internet has revolutionized many aspects of today’s business world and has created (and destroyed) massive enterprises. You now have the opportunity to benefit from the competitive advantages enjoyed by Google and Amazon.com without the substantial investment and risks that they have incurred. Before you spend another cent, penny or yen on your information systems we suggest you evaluate the Web 3.0 opportunities offered by FlitePlan.