Service Management

The Performance of Business Processes & IT Systems are being increasingly put under pressure to demonstrate their business value, to show how well – or badly – these are serving the business key functions. One of the best disciplines that is regularly being used to do this is by implementing a Service Management Process, whereby a set of internal processes are used to give a better service to the ‘client’, who may be internal or external. These processes are also integrated in a way so as to measure and where possible increase the efficiency of the service.

Service Management is a way of thinking more than a piece of technology and Organizations need to rethink the way they provide services, to move away from the technology-centric view to a business-centric view. Business people measure success using performance indicators like average daily sales volumes or customer service delays, while IT operations tend to focus on technology performance and availability. Service Management correlates these separate worlds. It's a perspective that will change the way companies manage service levels.

One of the leading methodologies for Service Management is the IT Infrastructure Library, more known as ITIL. It is one of the most consistent and comprehensive documented philosophies of ‘best practice’ Service Management. ITIL was developed by the British Government and the British Standards Institution and hence the BS-15000 standards were published.

SAI has teamed up with Marval Solutions from UK to bring to Malta the opportunity in the business community Service Management Consultancy & products based on ITIL & latest Service Management practices. Marval - established since the late 80s are acknowledged by leading industry experts & it's customers as one of the most experienced solutions providers of IT Service Management software, training & consultancy services.

Channel Commerce & Services Integration

Channel services presents companies with an incredible opportunity to create value and extend their reach via innovative ways of utilising accepted and broad appeal channels such as mobile phones, television as well as the internet. In the area of banking SoftAccess has created an alliance an international company which is a leading global provider of channel banking and card payment solutions. This International company has a network of well-established offices and representatives across Europe, India, Africa, Asia Pacific Rim and the Middle East. SoftAccess recognised early on the potential of the channel banking solution and is currently forging forward to present solutions.

Data warehousing & Business Intelligence Solutions

In 2002 and beyond, Gartner Group predicts that many users will adopt a staggering amount of disparate and unrelated business intelligence (BI) technologies — largely through applications — adding to BI fragmentation in organizations. There will be a substantial increase in partnership and merger and acquisition activity as ETL (extraction, transformation and loading) and integration broker vendors seek to broaden their offerings in response to increased competition for IT budgets. SoftAccess has already seen this prediction actuate with the recent announcement of Hyperion about its partnership with Crystal Decisions. Although BI and data warehousing technologies have been around for several years, the level of adoption has not been as high as one would expect. The slowing markets and recent spate in cuts in IT expenditure will force companies to look harder at extending the lifespan of their existing information systems. SoftAccess believes that the “age” of BI and data warehousing has come for mid-sized companies and that the market has driven pricing down sufficiently for new adopters of the technology. Which is why SoftAccess has become a system integration partner of Hyperion Solutions, the leading global BI and Data Warehousing company.

Web Development

Clearly another paradigm shift is in the offing – the age of bulky desktop PCs is passé and the industry is already looking a rock solid applications of a mobile nature – combining what’s best in technology gadgets – mobile communicators, personal digital assistants, location aware technologies and commodity item economics. The new wave from the software industry is in what is – in its current early manifestation – Web Services. Building an application that is inherently internet-aware and mandates the presence of the internet to function by utilising software components located on far flung application servers around the globe. SoftAccess currently provides web development services and has developed a number of applications such as an Online Car Hire/Fleet Management System and a Events & Conferences reservation engine. With an eye on the near future , SoftAccess has invested time and training of its personnel to catch the next wave of Web Services – which encompasses such esoteric jargon such as UDDI , SOAP, DOM and SAX to mention but a few. Our strength in this market is growing and our engineering excellence is reflected by the hardcore customers we have. The applications built are scalable and perform – in some cases – in excess of OEM manufacturers’ expectations or benchmarks.

Enterprise Application Engineering

Application integration and middleware technologies were once considered to be very exotic. In the early days of integration brokers (e.g., 1996), it was not uncommon for enterprises to spend significant sums to build their own broker software. At that time, the market for brokers was the high end and the leading edge. The same degree of esoterica was seen in the early days of application servers, Web integration servers and business process managers. This is changing. Although there are elements of the sector that are still esoteric much of the application integration and middleware space is becoming well-understood and beginning to have a broad appeal. The key reason behind this growth is that businesses are realising that success cannot be offset by the risk of simply replacing existing systems wholesale. Tried and testing systems must be leveraged and enterprise application integration & engineering (aka EAE) is the key to future proofing an organisation’s investment in IT.