Software as a Service (SaaS)

Wood offers a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution hosted on Microsoft Azure’s cloud-based servers.

Currently, you can access SaaS applications via RemoteApp and our web app, IC-Web. For more information, see SaaS Using RemoteApp.

In this release, we are introducing a new SaaS authentication model that supports Single Sign-On (SSO) with your company user account. This will enable direct access to NEXUS applications through a web browser via a single link. SaaS customers currently using RemoteApp will be gradually migrated to this new solution once it becomes available. For more information, see SaaS Using Single Sign-On (SSO).

Prerequisites

Before using the SaaS solution for NEXUS, ensure that you comply with the requirements as described in Software as a Service (SaaS) Deployment.

Features

When using SaaS, consider the following features:

Location

Wood currently operates cloud hubs in the UK, USA and Australia. We can deploy services in any Microsoft Azure data centre as required for clients with specific geographic restrictions on data storage. Note though that this may incur additional costs.

Sign-on

  • SaaS via RemoteApp: NEXUS has the ability to authenticate users via Active Directory connection.

  • SaaS via SSO: NEXUS supports Single Sign-on (SSO) via OAuth through Azure AD (Entra ID). Note that for security reasons, authentication is restricted to a single customer domain.

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 (e.g. 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 NEXUS IC and <300ms for IC-Web.

Backup regime

Database backups are carried out 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 hardware failures through the use of redundant Azure infrastructure and provides coverage in the event that a data centre goes offline. Wood uses Microsoft Azure geo-redundant storage for all database backups. The DR/BC Plan calls for automated deployment of new cloud server infrastructure and restoration of the most recent database backup. Restore Point Objective is a maximum of 24 hours. Restore Time Objective is a maximum of 48 hours.

Privacy & Confidentiality

Data is stored securely in Microsoft SQL Server and access is only granted to authenticated users.

Security

Access to data within NEXUS is controlled by in-built functional security. In case of SaaS with SSO, logged in users are authenticated by SSO with the customer’s domain. In case of SaaS with RemoteApp, logged in users are authenticated by username/password. Each user is assigned security permissions. Security permissions can be defined for roles (for a group of users) or single users. Security for the overall service is built in 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.

Administration Services provided under SaaS

Because we have the ability to more closely manage cloud instances of NEXUS IC than we do for instances deployed on client’s own infrastructure, we are able to offer these additional administration 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 optimisation

  • 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

  • Subscriber database creation and database synchronisation management services