TrackVia: Helping Business Users to Harness the Promises of the Cloud
Alongside efficient and secure management of business-critical information, deployment of effective applications driven by and aligned with business processes and goals is essential to competitive success. However, achievement of these goals has historically been difficult, expensive, time-consuming and intensive in its consumption of IT resources and skills.
This has led to a "lesser of two evils" situation for many businesses, forcing them to choose between expensive, time-consuming and IT-intensive custom applications or less expensive, but less-than-optimal, off-the-shelf alternatives. Businesses with few or no IT resources are often forced to rely entirely on off-the-shelf applications and databases that offer limited or no features for easy modification. At such businesses, processes are often modified around the limitations of the applications or databases instead of the other way around, a sub-optimal alternative to be sure.
What businesses need is a third choice: tools and platforms that enable rapid and economical creation of tailored business applications and information repositories. These tools and platforms must also support easy modification in timely response to changing processes, goals or business conditions. In addition, these tools and platforms must include sufficient security, manageability and interoperability with incumbent IT resources to enable effective and efficient support by IT teams or support providers.
Fortunately, cloud-based solutions are appearing that satisfy all of these requirements. TrackVia, for example, offers a cloud-based database and application platform, as well as "Ready-Built Apps," an application programming interface (API) and an App Developer Kit. The database and applications platform are available in WorkGroup, Professional and Enterprise Editions, with pricing beginning at $99 per month for up to five users. Free 14-day trials are available for the WorkGroup and Professional Editions, while 90-day pilots are available for the Enterprise Edition, according to the company.
The TrackVia Web-based architecture is built upon what is typically referred to as the "LAMP stack," with "LAMP" an acronym for the Linux operating system, the Apache open-source Web server, the MySQL open-source database and the Perl programming environment. This stack supports most of the world's open source business applications and is widely understood and supported.
TrackVia has added multi-tenant support, broad scalability and multiple levels of security. The company's cloud- based resources are hosted in a Tier 1 data center certified as compliant with SAS 70 Type II auditing standards. The architecture's API enables interoperability with third-party applications, an includes an import/expert wizard for use with Microsoft Excel spreadsheet information. The company also offers ready-built connections for several popular applications, including Google Docs, Parallels virtualization and automation solutions, QuickBooks and Salesforce.com. This interoperability and extensibility reduce risks and costs of entry and exit for users exploring the TrackVia solution.
