More Technology
Virtual Server - Norse has always tried to help clients avoid the risks and complexities and costs of administering complex server environments. In the past we deployed "native servers" that is servers that had the database and operationg systems merged in a single piece of special purpose software. These machines were easy to administer and easy to reconstruct and recover relative to other alternatives at the time. However, they were a specialty computer product and required expensive engineering on the part of the manufacturer in order to keep up with hardware advances and new devices. Eventually we knew these machines would no longer be available and our clients would be faced with employing a server administrator.
To get around this problem we joined forces with EasyCo (Easy Computing). We had known and worked with the principals of EasyCo for many years. They were working on developing an easy secure way to provide completely administered servers for users who did not want to have to deal with administering their own. The theory was and is that a few very skilled administrators can manage a large number of servers in the right technical environment, with the right tools at low cost. We joined in the early deployment testing and adapted the "Virtual Server" approach for our clients, once we were convinced it was superior to other options available.
The Virtual Server from Norse and EasyCo is a server, in fact a complete Linux server, that is built for and maintained for a Norse client in a specialized internet facility called a "host farm". The server is loaded with the Universe database and ith Norse application software and is accessed over the internet from your local area network, using a propietary software link we call the "Gateway". The Gateway provides a secure, encrypted, and buffered link to your local site. The Gateway then appears to be your Virtual Server to the rest of your local area network. Your users do not need access to the internet to use the Gateway. The Gateway configuration is managed for you by Norse and you may have as many gateways as you have sites from which you wish to connect. There are a number of advantages the gateway approach provides in terms of band width utilization, automatically redundant pathing , DES3 level encryption and session buffering that we would be glad to discuss with you if you are interested.
The bottom line is that this approach is economical, secure, scalable, robust, flexible, bandwidth efficient and absolutely painless to administer.
Application Import - (Automatic Upgrade Installation) Because our clients use Virtual Servers and because our development environments are also Virtual Servers, we have been able to automate the process of installing incremental software updates. These updates are installed automatically by scripts that we build on our product development servers. By using these scripts we are able to have all of our clients keep up with our most current work each month. Currently we install upgrades for our clients, at no charge , whenever we work on their machine. In the near future we will be publishing a list of the upgrades available for production release along with a description of the changes being made and clients will be able to run the upgrade scripts themselves.
We are also able to connect client virtuals one to another. This is a special purpose case used primarily when we need inter company consignment inventory capabilities for large maintenance or parts distribution environments. We'll be glad to discuss the application of this capability with you if the need should arise.
