Software as a Service (SaaS)¶
Wood provides a SaaS solution using cloud-based servers in MS Azure. Access is provided via RemoteApp and our web app, IC-Web.
Location – Wood presently operates cloud hubs in UK, USA, SE Asia and Australia. We can stand up services in any MS Azure data centre as required for clients with specific geographic restrictions on data storage.
Sign-on – NEXUS has the ability to authenticate users via Active Directory connection.
Availability – System availability is historically greater than 99.9%.
Downtime – Planned application downtime is required for server O/S patching. This is performed monthly and is typically performed out of hours. Non-routine downtime is scheduled and approved with client contact.
Response times & Latency – Tasks within NEXUS can take a varying amount of time (from milliseconds to minutes) depending on complexity. Increased network latency can degrade performance. Wood recommends <120ms latency for acceptable performance with RemoteApp and <300ms for IC-Web.
Backup regime – daily database backups are taken and retained for 14 days. A monthly database backup is retained for two years.
Disaster Recovery (DR) & Business Continuity (BC) – There is no client side requirement for DR/BC. The hosted service is resilient to single server failures through the use of redundant Azure infrastructure to provide fail-over in the event that a data centre goes offline.
Privacy & Confidentiality – Data is stored securely in MSSQL Server and access is only granted to authenticated users.
Security – Access to data within NEXUS is controlled by in-built functional security. Logged in users are authenticated by SSO (where configured, or Username Password authentication where not). And each user is assigned security permissions. Security permissions can be defined at Group Level, or user Level. Security for the overall service relies on MS Azure which meets a broad set of international and industry-specific compliance standards.
Scalability – the SaaS service can be scaled both horizontally and vertically for expansion of scope and increased number of users.