evince blog

We had an excellent time at a procurement event in Hampshire this week, and one of the questions that came up was around the benefits of the hosted model which I thought it was worth blogging for use in LAs business cases.

The evince product follows a Software as a Service (SaaS) model (ie an OL hosted model) which allows Local Authorities to quickly implement the system without making changes to their IT infrastructure. We believe this gives the following benefits:

• Low cost of ownership due to the removal of the requirement for hardware and software to be maintained and supported by the LA.

• Availability of the system from the day of purchase, eliminating a long and costly implementation period.

• Excellent security and availability provided by OL’s datacentre facilities.

• All LAs benefit from a rapid unified development cycle without the implementation cost of upgrades (all modifications to the product will be available to all authorities, with monthly bug fixes releases and quarterly functionality releases.)

• The ability to quickly and flexibly roll the system out to users without the need to build wide area networks or upgrade end user infrastructure (evince runs over secure internet channels and requires only a web browser). This is particularly useful when used in a multi-agency context where users are external to the LAs infrastructure.

• The ability to integrate with both internet resources and LA back office systems through an open architecture which allows secure access to the data held.

• The cost of the system is proportional to the number of users, rather than being set by the cost of the infrastructure. This allows all customers to access a fair price based upon usage rather than be paying an average price no matter the requirement.

• OL is interested in developing the social aspects of the service to leverage the power inherent in cross-LA usage to allow peer-to-peer support and painless information sharing across customers. This would be particularly beneficial to regional or multi-agency groups who would like to work together without initiating a costly infrastructure integration project.

• Supports the shared services agenda by lowering the per user costs through the use of shared infrastructure, whilst leveraging the low cost of utility computing rather than in-house resources.

We believe that the decision to run hosted rather than locally does not equate to the system being closed rather than open. Rather that the key concern should be about access to the data for integration and interoperability rather than the location of the system itself. The philosophy behind the design of evince is that the data held should be easily accessible through standardised interfaces to support LAs integration agendas. A key concern for LAs is the availability and support of interfaces allowing for sustainable integration, rather than closed systems where integration is directly to the data layer and hence prone to failure as systems change.