Low-bandwidth design opens the door to Internet services

For many small and medium-sized companies, the idea of accessing essential business-related information as an Internet-based service is discomfiting.

Concerns about security, availability and speed are common: How is our data protected from outsiders? How will our business be affected by network congestion? What guarantees are there that the service will be available when we need it?

In some cases these concerns are valid, especially in the case of online service-based applications that haven't been written to optimise speed and security.

At HansaWorld, we're fortunate that our applications have been written from the start to optimise bandwidth consumption, originally across Mac networks and now across any network at all, including the Internet. As a result, our software still works at speeds as low as 9.6kB per second, enabling users to log in to the system using mobile devices with minimal bandwidth.

This speed makes it possible to bring third-party information directly into core business applications, making work much faster and employees more productive.

For example, many companies need access to up-to-date financial information like stock prices and currency exchange rates. For most people, this involves opening a new application or Web browser to find the information, then copying it into their financial programme - where it may rapidly become out of date. With HansaWorld, the click of a single button is enough to bring up-to-date information into your application, quickly and accurately. This also means all your employees will get their information from the same source, preventing conflicts and inaccuracies.

The same convenience is available for any information that you need to use regularly, from credit histories to currency exchange rate lookups. Just about anything you need to know is available on a server somewhere, and it is now easy to make accessible to everybody in your organisation that needs it, when they need it.

Apart from convenience and consistency of information, this can also be much more cost-effective. There is no need to buy a separate database package for every user, which then needs to be updated on each machine individually. When you're accessing an Internet-based service, you have the security of knowing that you always have access to the most recent version - no need to upgrade!

In countries like Sweden and Finland, many companies have taken Internet services a step further, for example, by using third-party distributors for their invoices. Once an invoice is okayed in the company system, the third-party takes over to deliver it to the customer using the most appropriate technology, whether that's directly into the customer's accounting system or via the conventional mail. This means much more efficient handling of invoices and better cash flow.

Remote backup and disaster recovery also become much cheaper and easier with applications that are designed to optimise bandwidth usage. With HansaWorld's low bandwidth requirements, it's possible to back all your business information up to a remote server daily - and restore a complete working system in minutes. In the case of a theft, flood or other disaster that leaves you without access to hardware, it's even possible to keep a business running from an Internet cafe if necessary.

At the moment very few business software packages have the right platform and architecture to offer Internet services that are stable and fast enough to be genuinely useful. HansaWorld has been written from its earliest days to maximise bandwidth resources and speed, so that nowadays Internet services are available even on slow or variable-speed cellphone connections such as GPRS.