Software as a Service (SaaS)¶
Wood provides a SaaS solution using cloud-based servers in Microsoft 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 Microsoft 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 – Access to NEXUS via SaaS may be temporarily unavailable for scheduled maintenance or for unscheduled emergency maintenance due to causes beyond Wood’s control. The window for daily automated maintenance of servers is typically out of hours (eg. 0200 to 0400) and will NOT always result in service downtime. This maintenance window allows critical security issues to be addressed promptly after the release of a relevant patch. Any necessary ‘non-routine’ downtime during business hours 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 – database backups are taken each business day and retained for 14 calendar days. Additional backups for longer term retention can be held by agreement or transmitted to customer. This may have a small cost impact.
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 and provides coverage in the event that a data centre goes offline. Wood replicates database backups to each of the Azure data centres that we use around the globe.
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 Microsoft 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.
Additional Features¶
Because we have the ability to closely manage cloud instances of NEXUS IC than we do for instances deployed on client’s own infrastructure, we are able to offer some additional features:
- Scheduled reports
- Import and export jobs are offloaded to a separate server, allowing users to exit NEXUS while jobs continue to execute
- REST API requests which generate and download reports are only available for SaaS clients
- Database maintenance
- Infrastructure optimization
- Database configuration management across regions
- Wood users supporting your database will not consume a NEXUS license
- Software update service, including early access to Beta releases
Pre-Requisites for RemoteApp¶
Client Operating System: Windows 8, Windows 10. x86 (32-bit) and x64 (64-bit), Windows Server 2012 R2 (or higher) supported.
Windows 7¶
Note that Windows 7 is no longer supported. If you use it anyway, you will at minimum need to install the following Microsoft patches: http://support2.microsoft.com/kb/2830477 and then update by following the Microsoft patch notes here: http://support2.microsoft.com/kb/2923545
IC-Web Supported Browsers¶
- Chrome 54.0 or above
- Microsoft Edge 79 or above
- Safari 9.1 or above
- Firefox 53.0 or above. 3D drawings may be slower in Firefox.
Internet Explorer is not recommended, and does not support 3D drawings.
