Opsera's strengths lie in four areas of technology, where we have built considerable experience and knowledge: content management, enterprise architecture integration, infrastructure & systems management and business intelligence.
Content Management
As a CEO, CIO or Senior Business Manager, you will recognise the value of the content, data and knowledge generated by your organisation, and you will be aware of the need to consolidate content from multiple disparate sources. You may also be concerned about security, scalability and disaster recovery.
A well-designed content storage solution will enable each and every employee, contractor, partner and client to have access to the information that is relevant to them - from anywhere in the world, using any Internet-enabled device, at any time of day or night - but prevent unwanted intrusion from others outside the realms of your business.
Opsera adopts best-practice approaches to content management architecture design that can help deliver the availability, accessibility, performance and security you need. The ideal system will have:
- Federated search that reduces storage and replication bandwidth requirements.
- Geographically distributed content - for disaster recovery or to speed up access for a regional headquarters.
- A standards-based repository to prevent vendor lock-in and support standard protocols for accessing the data.
- Flexible access controls, integrated with the enterprise Single Sign On or LDAP directory, and a comprehensive audit trail utility.
- A single (logical) repository for documents, invoices, e-mails, web content, and source code (replacing shared drives).
- An enterprise workflow system or enterprise architecture integration (Web Services, SOA, Enterprise Service Bus) to provide repository services for other internal applications.
Opsera consultants have worked extensively with many of the leading proprietary document and content management packages such as FileNet and Stellent, and have delivered bespoke integration solutions and functionality enhancements for many of our clients.
We have evaluated many Open Source document and content management systems and have selected Alfresco as our strategic partner on the basis of their modern architecture, robustness and technical vision. Opsera is a gold member of the Alfresco partner programme and were one of the first companies in the UK to work with the Alfresco team.
However, we pride ourselves on being vendor neutral and are able to advise and implement a full spectrum of proprietary or Open Source content management packages to meet your technical and business objectives.
Related case studies
- Supply-chain Integration in Journals Publishing
- Opsera helps Global Publishing Corporation Improve Innovation
- Moving an Information Publishing Business Online
- Content Architecture Design Enables New Services for Global Law Firm
- Opsera helps the Royal Society evaluate Journals Production Tracking Systems
- Developing a Content Management Strategy for a Major International Publisher
- Improving Production Processes for Books and Journals at SAGE Publications
Enterprise Architecture Integration
As a CTO or CIO you may be concerned about the proliferation of point solutions across your business, increasing difficulties managing integration, and the increasing complexity and cost of development & support.
Opsera's team of experienced architects can help you evaluate and design your overall enterprise architecture based on sound principles and best practices, and provide a roadmap that will enable you to migrate towards an appropriate scalable, flexible and interoperable architecture over time.
We apply the following principles:
- Re-use of technology assets - a key factor in designing software for enterprise architecture. When done correctly it can dramatically reduce development and test cycles.
- Granularity and stability - to provide loosely coupled generic components or services. The abstraction level used in method design contributes to the system granularity; and consistent use of interface method specifications will improve the stability of a system.
- Interoperability - vital for exchanging data with business partners or within established businesses. And particularly pertinent for those who have been through mergers & acquisitions, where there is often a heterogeneous environment which may include legacy systems.
- Web Services are a good enabling technology for communications outside the firewall as they can leverage transport authentication and encryption designed for web pages. SOAP messages can carry binary attachments and even incorporate digital signatures for non-repudiation.
- The Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach has been gaining traction over the last few years. Whilst the concept is nothing new (Operating System developers have been employing the notion for some time) Web Services have provided a standard means for describing a service; WSDL (Web Services Description Language) describes the methods a service provides, the data that is to be exchanged and how to access the service.
- Standardisation and structure - for effective application integration. The 'bus' paradigm is important here: Rather than integrating applications with each other, each application has an adaptor to allow it to talk to the bus.
Opsera has years of experience in providing enterprise architecture, middleware and Web Services expertise in financial services (e.g. large insurance brokers, swaps trading marketplace) and telcos. We have designed and implemented architectures leveraging SOA and ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) and can advise and deliver the right integration approach to ensure your architecture can meet the demands of a growing business.
Related case studies
- Opsera Lays Foundations for New Gaming Company
- Opsera Helps to Launch Truphone
- Moving an Information Publishing Business Online
- Pioneering Data Exchange in the Insurance Industry
- Developing a Swaps Trading Platform for a new European Start-up
- Developing a Content Management Strategy for a Major International Publisher
Infrastructure & Systems Management
The physical infrastructure is vital to the success of any software solution.
Whether you are:
- starting from scratch or planning the next evolution of your server farm
- trying to pinpoint a performance bottleneck or improve your hardware utilisation
- hardening your Internet-facing servers or providing secure remote access
- implementing high availability, disaster recovery or business continuity plans
Opsera's team of experienced infrastructure architects can help you.
Opsera knows what it takes to run mission-critical business systems and Internet channels to ensure that your solution is fit for purpose yet capable of scaling as demand grows. Our team can advise you on how to set up your network, including security options for firewalls and VPN. If you have under-utilised hardware or limited rack space we can assist with virtualisation technology, having experience in various solutions including Xen and VMWare. Opsera has significant experience of using Open Source tools to build out, manage and monitor complex production environments for large enterprise customers.
Opsera's team includes Linux and Unix gurus: Red Hat certified and Debian package maintainers, with many years of Linux, Solaris and AIX experience, together with shell scripting and Perl expertise.
Related case studies
- Opsera Lays Foundations for New Gaming Company
- Opsera Helps to Launch Truphone
- Moving an Information Publishing Business Online
- Redhat Linux Installation for a Major Global Airline
- Developing a Swaps Trading Platform for a new European Start-up
Business Intelligence
As your company grows, it will not be long before your management team needs to collate statistics to help business planning and assess performance against targets.
- How many sales have we made this financial year?
- How many new accounts have we won?
- How much is our customer acquisition cost?
- How long is our production cycle?
Business intelligence covers the broad spectrum of obtaining data from operational systems through to providing meaningful results to the appropriate audience. However, there are many questions to answer along the way to providing a successful business intelligence solution:
Sourcing data - is all the required data available? Does it come from legacy mainframe systems? How frequently is a data extract required? Is the source system 24x7? Can historic data be obtained?
Data quality - is the data correctly populated? Is the data sparse? Can meaningful data be derived?
Normalisation - for example, is there a common definition of a customer? Is all data at the same level of granularity?
Presentation - do the users need printable reports and/or be able to perform ad-hoc analysis? Do they require access to historic data for trend analysis or projections? Is the business dependent on live operational statistics or monthly or cumulative figures for planning and performance analysis? Do users need to be able to drill through to the source data? Do they need to be able to export to Excel? Do reports need access control?
Open Source Business Intelligence offerings are becoming increasingly sophisticated - there are a variety of tools available, various reporting packages and even data warehouse offerings.
Opsera consultants have provided database and reporting expertise to the telco, banking and law enforcement industries.