Company Profile

The company was founded in 1991 as a specialist software house.  Initial skills included business analysis, database design and software implementation experience and qualification.  Initially, software was developed on and for third-party systems including compilers from companies such as Microsoft and Borland, and databases primarily from Oracle.

Objectives

Initially the objective was to design, implement and distribute software based on industrial standards and centering around the Oracle database.  Software based on this premise was developed for the first 10 years of the company’s existence.

In 2001, the goals of the company were revised to include the development of in-house compilers, linkers and most especially a high-performance database.  Problems encountered with third-party compilers and databases had resulted in a shift of focus and a target including the operating software normally bought in by almost all software houses.

By 2006 all development had been migrated to the in-house development platform (Blueprint) and our proprietary distributed database (Lava).  From this time on we qualified to call ourselves a Software Foundry.

Platforms

There are a large number of computing platforms currently in use.  The superficial division of computers into Windows, Apple OS and Linux actually divides into far more incompatible or partially compatible platforms, with significant effort required to migrate from one variant to the next.

In terms of the fact that well over 90% of the desktop market utilizes Microsoft Windows, our decision has been and  remains to focus our products on this platform. 

To support legacy equipment, we ensure that our current product range still operates correctly on Windows XP, in a slightly degraded mode.  Full support is provided for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

None of the Linux or other Unix variants are supported.  This is partly due to pragmatism, but also due to the lack of support in all of these systems for Completion Ports, a crucial mechanism for our networking and distribution technology.

Applications and Systems

Our current product range includes the following :

Blueprint Development Suite

A software development suite including large-scale project management, database entity-relationship designer, 3GL compiler and linker, and interpreted 4GL programming system.

Lava Distributed SQL Database

A fully distributed SQL database offering very high performance and large-scale data storage.  The only database in existence which provides distributed data to the client application level.

Vault Document Server

A large capacity document server with full-text search facilities, version control and comprehensive access control

Lava Workflow

A comprehensive and flexible workflow and business process management solution fully integrated with the Vault Document Server.

Lava Mail

An E-mail harvesting application providing for centralized archiving and full-text search across any number of E-mail accounts

Company Expertise

We can draw from experience and expertise in a wide range of software-related disciplines.  Amongst our areas of competence are :

Analysis
•    Business process analysis
•    Systems analysis
•    Computer system design

Communications and Networking
•    Data transfer
•    Protocol design
•    State machines
•    Completion ports and queues

Databases
•    Design
•    Reduction
•    Normalization
•    Optimizing
•    Reporting
•    Integrating

Data Processing
•    Sorting
•    Searching
•    Merging, de-duplication
•    Validation
•    Importing
•    Exporting

Large-scale Projects

During the existence of the company, we have been involved in a number of large-scale software projects over a range of disciplines.  The following list includes only the most significant projects completed.

Configuration Management

In the first 8 years after formation of the company, a comprehensive configuration and product data management solution was designed and implemented with interaction of several large South African corporates including Grintek and Altech.  A number of major South African corporations utilized this solution for many years.

Insurance Management

Over a 5 year period in the mid-nineties the analysis and implementation of an insurance house management system was undertaken with the co-operation of a local representative of Lloyds of London.

Refinery Management

Commencing in 1997, we analyzed the operation of the gold refinery in Germiston South Africa, Rand Refinery, which is the largest gold refinery in the world.  By 1999 we had assumed complete assay, gold refining and treasury processing for this facility, and operated these functions for a further 4 years.

Customers

The following companies are past and current customers

Conclusion

We focus on providing application and technology solutions which are appropriate and flexible, based on stable, long-term technology platforms.  We have a wide range of computer expertise available from both in-house and consultant specialists, allowing us to address virtually any problem in the information domain.  Our growing library of software products provides a spread of functionality indicative of our versatility.  As our customer base shows, we have a highly competitive set of solutions based on several exclusive proprietary technologies.