Stop Press
Watch a full demonstration of the next version of Dynamic AI including "magic" new features that can produce a Dashboard of critical data including graphs from scratch in minutes, not hours!
Click here for the link
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Welcome to our early summer
e-Newsletter
Despite the recession and general gloom and doom, we seem to be busier than ever! Perhaps that is not so uncommon however - whenever financial belt tightening happens, we have noticed that the smaller IT development businesses seem to do better. Maybe this has something to do with value for money - we would like to think so, anyway!
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| Shows
Asckey at Internet World
Asckey kicked off their 2009 Show season by exhibiting at Internet World at Earls Court on 28-30 April. Aimed at all things related to the ever growing www environment, IW attracts visitors from all over the world, all keen to hear about the latest developments in web technology.
For us, the show was extremely successful with enquiries for our secure hosting, webapp development and data management services. However most attention focused on Dynamic AI, our web based data analysis and reporting tool, (See below for details on the latest version) with many visitors actively seeking more effective ways of managing the large amount of data circulating within their organisations.
So having done the easy part and stood on our stand looking intelligent, we now have the hard part in following up between 50-60 sales enquiries whilst preparing for another Earls Court Show in early June.
Asckey Exhibiting at GC Live Exhibition
Billed as the leading event for Public Sector ICT, our secure hosting services, and new version of Dynamic AI are a good match for current public sector interests.
"The 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review has placed tight financial constraints on central and local government."
"The government’s aim to award 30% of contracts to SME’s ... "
Both of those statements highlighted in the exhibition brochure look encouraging. As already notes, we feel "Small to medium Emtrprises", like us, can offer great value for money, so wth that in mind, we will be giving it a go!
Tuesday and Wednesday, 9th/10th June, Earls Court.
Stand L307
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NHS N3 Hosting Demand Escalating
The Connecting for Health authority that manages the N3 network has recently tightened up on security issues, resulting in a number of web mediated systems have needed to look for a new N3 authorised hosting service, as in many cases hosting within a Hospital trust has been deemed unacceptable, even though within the N3 "cloud".
Asckey Data Services Ltd has been authorised as a N3 approved hosting site for several years now, and as a result of we have seen a big increase in enquiries for secure N3 hosting services. As these have more and more involved "Patient Identifiable Data", we have applied for, and successfully achieved, extension of our authorisation to cover managing such data and applications.
As a result, we are now becoming involved in hosting some very interesting applications, ranging from relatively simple web sites that need to be within the N3 cloud, through Microsoft Sharepoint based applications, to Clinical Trials and Clinical Support and Decision making active, database backed web applications using a variety of web technologies, including Microsoft .Net
The UK Health Service runs what is reckoned to be the largest Corporate Intranet in Europe, known as "N3" and the fact that it has to handle sensitive, personal patient data has meant that it has had to become one of the most secure of large scale intranets. It also handles a huge volume of data, including image data, with all that that can imply.
One particular system provides emergency cover for specific clinical threats such as the Pandemic Flu or, previously SARS. This manages the assessment of patients calling their service with suspected flu - although the system provides more than simple flu assessments as it covers all aspects of patients healthcare. Hopefully, we will not be called on to stress test our server facilities in the event of a pandemic!
Some of these systems involve "roaming" access by Health Service staff, so secure VPN using physical tokens has become part of our standard connectivity options.
Our latest enquiry will need around 22 servers, which should keep our long suffering systems manager busy for a week or so!
So, if you are in need of secure web site or web application hosting, we may be able to provide a very cost effective solution.
And if you need "non secure" hosting, in the knowledge that our methods and procedures have been evaluated and approved by one of the most security conscious Intranet management’s in the business - give us a call!
More on our specialist hosting services here.
Tel 0845 270 7747
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 Dynamic AI
We have been promoting and using the Dynamic AI Business Intelligence System for some time now, and the next version now in Beta test takes the capacity for creating extensive management reporting deliverable "any time, any place" via the web to new levels of ease of use.
One of the challenges in developing high level management information is actually understanding the way your data is structured. In Enterprise level computing, the data analysis element can amount to sometimes six figure consultancy bills, completely beyond the reach of smaller businesses. "DAI" has always had a goal of bringing similar levels of management information to such smaller businesses, and the new version brings some very clever new facilities into play.
These include
Drag and Drop
Dynamic AI considerably expands "drag and drop" functionality. Examples
- Drag a data value to the left - defines a grouping of records
- Drag a value to the right - you want to (sub) total it.
Very neat! - and this in a Web Application, remember.
Automated Intelligence
This is really impressive
- Auto-sense relevant group listings
- Auto-detect relevant measurements and time-dimensions
- Auto-adapt graph types
- DAI does much of the work needed to determine how best to present the data, including automatic scaling, etc. DAI will pick the optimum type of graph to represent the data you ask it to plot.
- Auto-sense countries - link to country level maps
- Drill-up / narrow down data-source for dashboard
- Drill-down specifications with auto-elimination of redundant columns
- Report drag-drop and merge
- Comprehensive analysis without coding or SQL skills.
All this is based on your actual live data and to do this the authors have looked at what a business analyst might do to initially understand your data.
So:-
- DAI analyses a sample (say 40K records) of the data contained in tables and recognizes where values appear to be repeated - a customer Code for example. It then automatically creates sub reports showing summarised/drill down information based on those groups. (Auto-sense relevant group listings)
- Then, if you drag one of these over another, it will "intelligently" create a merged report for the combination. Which you can then develop further as appropriate. (Report drag-drop and merge ) This looks - and is - very clever!
It is amazing how much "sense" this new version of DAI can make of your data. And with that done, and DAI’s traditional "agility" in offering ad-hoc exploration of the data presented, creating meaningful business information becomes less of a technical exercise, and one more related to understanding what the business is all about.
And, talking to a business analyst working with one of the traditional Business Intelligence Systems in one of those "six figure consultancy scenarios", the reaction to these features was "if only"!
If you are using one of the industry standard databases, and would like to give Dynamic AI a try, download the Beta and see for yourself!
Alternatively, get in contact with us to find out how we could help you achieve a new level of business management reporting.
STOP PRESS
A "Webinar" recording of a live presentation of Dynamic AI is available on our DAI Website.
Call 0845 270 7747 or email enquiries@asckey.com
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Eclipse-fm® Version 4
Our Eclipse-fm® Facilities Management software moved up to Version 4 in February, in what turned out to be a major upgrade with many new facilities.
One of these was a move to MS SQL Server as the standard database, which has allowed us to build in many new features. Two that are drectly related to the SQL database concept are.
User Access Profiling
In large organisations, particularly where many sites may be involved, there is a need to limit the amount of data available to a user to what is relevant and/or desirable to their role.
We can now define a user profile that is limited to specific site, specialism, management unit, etc. in almost unlimited combinations. Using SQL filtering techniques this has been achieved with no affect on performance - in fact, the SQL datbase foundation has improved performance all round.
Free Text Searching
No matter how much one tries to pre-classify data records, there comes a time when a resort free text search is the only answer to "I know it’s in there somewhere".
Within Eclipse-fm® users can now search for any phrase within maintenance task records and review each one returned. An invaluable way of realising the benefits of keeping good records by being able to find out "How did we fix this <problem> last time?". Just search for some text likely to be associated with the problem, and there it all is. In effect, Eclipse-fm® now contains its own, self maintaining "Knowledge Base".
More specific improvements have taken place in a completely reworked Purchase Orders/Requisitions system, the introduction of a flexible system that allows for the rapid definition of specialist maintenance needs,such as is demanded by specialist Electrical and Bio Mechanical Equipment (EBME), easily extended to other special servicing such as Vehicles.
Eclipse-fm® V4 has settled down very quickly, with users who have taken the system being very enthusiastic about the new features. Mike Thew from Ealing Primary Care Trust has been particularly enthusiastic about the new Purchase orders Module.
Chalk and Cheese.
This is how I found the new Eclipse Financial Order System, having extensively used the old system using the various pull down menus.
It was a breath of fresh air using the new module, with only two screens now available from the pull down menu, the first covering the whole order process and the second for re-allocation of the account codes on a processed order.
Back to Top
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| Client Focus
Two of our clients have been achieving commendable results with their application development of late.
Simon Coyne, of Suresoft has been developing a "Search Engine Explorer" (SEE) that allows you to fire off search requests to multiple search engines simultaneously. Not only that, but the search results can be stored for future use, and even shared amongst multiple users on a network.
Prior to becoming aware of Search Engine Explorer, the need for such a utility seemed a bit obscure. However, having seen what SEE can do, it is obvious that there is more to Internet searching than just Google. For example, the health world supports something like 60 specialist search engines, and all these, or whatever subset you wanted to set up could be hit from just the one search. The ability to retain and even share searches for further use is also of likely value.
Details from Simon Coyne’s recent VDF Sig presentation on SEE here. Or visit the SEE Website, where there is a free limited time evaluation download available, and unrestricted version is only $95. If you are a serious researcher, then SEE could be a a significant tool for you. And if not, but you do lots of Internet searching (who doesn’t these days?), then SEE could be a lot more than just a curiosity.
Martin Kelley, of DM Software, has taken the Data Access developed Electos website/webshop system, and very cleverly turned it into an integrated Windows and Web Site Student Lettings Management system.
Martin already had a very good looking Windows application for managing such rentals, and needed to be able to extend that functionality to publishing the property details to a web site. By simply changing the "Language" of the Electos system to "Estate Agent-ese", Martin was able to turn the web shop, with Products and, Prices and Shopping carts into something much closer to estate management with Properties, Weekly Rent and Arranging a Viewing.
Much more ambitiously, Martin has built a complete two way interaction from his Windows application to the web site, uploading property details, changing property status, particularly in bulk for the new academic year, changing rental prices, and downloading viewing requests. Usually all this can only be handled from within Electos, but Martin’s experience with developing web services has allowed him to deliver a completely seamless Windows-WebSite integration, and one that seems to have much impressed Data Access Europe, Electos’s authors.
Full details of this system, including some screen shots can be found in a short case study.
Martin now has three users signed up for this system, and is in the process of setting up these on a web server hosted by Asckey Data Services Ltd. if you know any estate agents who might be interested, I am sure Martin Kelly would love to hear from them. Let us know, and we will pass the details on.
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 For expert business application development, using virtually any database format, specialist web site and web application development and hosting -
Talk to us! 0845 2707747
Your individuality drives our excellence
Church End Farm
Warboys Road, Pidley,
Cambs PE28 3DA
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