When it comes to available business applications, many IT industry players encourage customers to fit a square peg into a round hole by forcing them to adapt their business requirements and processes to suite the application. But how do you get an application or system that caters for at least an 80/20, if not 100%, fit to your business requirements?
Adapting your business requirements and processes to suite the application is great if streamlining or reengineering the business is part of the plan. However, that`s often not the case and what works for Company A may not necessarily work for Company B.
So what are your choices? Well, make the fit, go bespoke or do something inbetween. Of course there are advantages and disadvantages to each, but the most important factors to consider are the flexibility of your application around your business needs, and how often these needs actually change? The right environment An application, and in turn the associated database, needs to be easy to build and understand, thereby making the deployment of required changes straightforward - basically, what you want is the least hassle in the shortest space of time. Enter the MultiValue (MV) database.
An MV database differs from a relational database in that its method of storing data is much more flexible than the two-dimensional table associated with relational databases, where the relationships between data items are explicitly specified as equally accessible attributes.
Cost, performance, and the speed of development also separate MV databases from relational systems. In fact, one of the key features of the MV database environment is that it allows for development flexibility and adaptability, giving Independent Software Vendors the ability to focus on the changing business needs of their customers and to tweak their applications in line with this. How many IT staff does it take... ...to keep the application and database running efficiently and effectively?
Probably as many as it does to change a light bulb! In an MV environment, database administration requirements are minimal because the technology`s structure allows for dynamic or on-the-fly growth of tables/files. The database therefore 'self-manages` its underlying data to a large extent and caters for data overflow without effecting the normal operation of the application and in turn, the business. The added bonus here is that associated costs are by and large covered over the life cycle of the application.
Keeping up with technology
Because of the advancement of technology in today`s world, databases need to reflect such advancements and this is apparent in the MV environment. Adding to its existing established and stable technology is the recognition of new industry developments, features and functionality, and the adaptation of these within the database. This applies not only to operating system platforms, but also to front-end technologies, making use of industry standard middle-ware and integration tools.
Organisations are thus assured that they can rely on the stability of existing applications whilst still being able to extract and transfer data to other disparate systems.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to the demands of today`s business applications, and your company`s ability to cater for such demands within your industry or vertical markets. This means that your systems need to be flexible, scalable and should provide the level of performance required by current market and technology demands.
Ultimately, it is the underlying technology - the power behind the solution - which plays a pivotal role in being able to deliver such functionality through the application.
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