SupportWizard

Specifications






Platforms



Server



Both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of the following OS's are supported for the server. For optimum performance, we strongly recommend using a 64 bit OS.




Web Server



    The installation package includes the JBoss application server and Tomcat JSP server, no additional web server is needed. For example, you can install the entire product on a laptop running Windows XP home edition or the server edition.

    If either apache or IIS are found, EnterpriseWizard will automatically integrate with them so that it can be accessed either through the JSP server on port 8080 (by default, the actual port is configurable) or through the native web server on port 80.



Client



    End User Interface:

    Any Browser

    Staff Interface:


      On Windows: IE 6.0, Mozilla 1.0+, FireFox 1.0+, Netscape 8.0+

      Recent releases of IE 7.0 are fully supported. Old releases need the following bug fix from MS:

      On Mac/Linux/Unix: Mozilla 1.0+, FireFox 1.0+, Netscape 8.0+




Internet Based



    SupportWizard is 100% Internet based. The only client software is the browser.



Architecture



    Architecture

    SupportWizard employs a multi-tier, J2EE/Application Server/RDBMS architecture on the server for enterprise connectivity and compatibility across operating systems.

    A fourth generation, Document Object Model (DOM) architecture on the browser provides immediate response (AJAX) and local caching for operations that do not require server access.

    The installer will detect and automatically configure the system to communicate through an Apache or IIS webserver. As indicated by the dotted lines, it can also be configured for direct communication with the JSP Servlet container if no webserver is installed on the machine.

    As indicated by the above diagram, the webserver, database and J2EE server can all be installed on different machines.

    In general moving the database to a seperate machine will not affect performance because J2EE caching is used to minimize database access and the database only uses one quarter the CPU resources of the J2EE server.

    For security reasons, the default SupportWizard installation configures the database not to listen on any ports and the J2EE server communicates with it via a "pipe" file. This prevents the possibility of a remote hacker accessing the database and also optimizes performance.


Scalability



    SupportWizard scales to meet the needs of global Fortune 100 corporations because it is built on a J2EE architecture designed for enterprise scalability. The following section analyzes performance characteristics.

    System resources are only used when the user actually does something, such as creating or editing a record. As is typical for HTML based web products, the "overhead" from passive users is almost zero. For example, when a user is filling out a web form, they are entirely passive from the perspective of system and only become active on clicking the Finish button. This is important because it means that performance is not based on "how many users" there are, but the related metric of "how many tickets are those users creating/editing per minute"

    On a single Xeon 5355 server with 8G RAM, SupportWizard can generate over 35,000 new tickets per hour when driven through the GUI. On a dual Xeon 5355 server, the number rises to over 60,000 tickets per hour and it continues to rise, almost linearly, with the number of processors. Note: Operations such as viewing FAQ records are far less CPU intensive than creating new tickets and the server can handle over 50,000 httpd requess per minute.

    The average member of a sales team or support staff works on 3-8 records per day. If we assume that all users are at the top end of this range and work on 8 records per day, we would expect a sales/support staff with 1,000 full time agents to generate or edit 8,000 records per day, a lot less than our entry level system can handle in half an hour. Of course, it is necessary to add a saftey factor for sudden peak loads and ideally CPU utilization should be less than 25%, so we generally recommend quad CPU configurations for such customers.

    This analysis is based on typical configurations, but the system supports creation of an unlimited number of business rules, each of which runs in the foreground or as a scheduled background task to call external scripts, generate emails, update related records and carry out other operations necessary to automate the business. The overhead from such processes can be significant, so for very large companies with highly sophisticated business rules, we support the IBM P-Series with up to 64 processors. Although it is unlikely that an enterprise will actually need more than a couple of machine configured with four Intel E7340 CPU's, our support for the P-Series guarantees that plenty of headroom will be available if the need arises.

    Another aspect of scalability is the size of knowledgebase that can be supported while maintaining good performance. For common operations such as finding records containing certain text and editing them, scalability is almost unlimited. The following video demonstrates searching a table containing over 10,000,000 records for some text (17 such records are found), editing one of them and saving the result.


Performance Analysis



    Provided the system is configured with at least 8G of RAM, very little time is spent on I/O and performance depends primarily upon the CPU. About 55% of CPU resources are spent on Java processes and 45% on database processes. By simply placing the application server and database on seperate machines, it is therefore possible to increase scalability by a factor of 1.8. For example, a pair of machines configured with four Intel E7340 CPU's will allow the generation of over 370,000 records per hour, compared to 205,000 for a single such machine. However, if massive throughput is not required, there is no advantage to splitting the database and application server accross seperate multi-core machines.

    From usage analysis on our ASP servers, we know that about 50% of CPU resources are spent submitting new records such as tickets and emails or editing to existing ones, 20% is spent generating charts/reports, 15% is spent searching for information and 15% is spent on miscellaneous tasks such as changing tabs, logging in, viewing history information, creating saved searches, changing views, etc.



Hardware Requirements





Installation Package and Upgrades



Installation Time



    Installing SupportWizard takes less than 7 minutes and is ready for immediate use. With our implementation services we guarantee that it will be fully customized to fit your business like a glove and in full production use within two weeks.



Upgrades and Support



    The


SQL Database



    Powered by MySQL   or     SQL Server 2000+

    SupportWizard uses JDBC for database interoperability and ships with a fully licensed copy of MySQL at no additional charge. is an extremely fast, easily maintained SQL database with a capacity to hold 64 Terabytes of data. The database is automatically installed and configured with the installation of SupportWizard.

    SupportWizard also supports SQL Server 2000+



Functionality



    The entire suite of EW functionality is available via the ASP model and whether you rent or purchase, the base price includes all modules, except for support of additional languages. A price quote maybe obtained by click the Price Quote button on the right of this screen.



Security



    Please see our

    Because no code is changed in order to build or configure a custom solution, all applications built on the SaaSWizard platform share the same core set of security characteristics. This platform is subject to regular review and testing by independant security analysts. Please click for the most recent review.



Product Testing



    Product changes are subject to the following stages of review and testing:

    • Detailed functionality specification

    • Design review of the proposed solution and code reviews

    • Functionality testing by the developer

    • A suite of over one thousand automated unit tests

    • A suite of automated GUI tests

    • A suite of manual tests by our QA department

    • Internal production use

    • Beta testing

    • Release candidate testing

    • Official release



ASP SERVICES



ASP Data Migration



    The SupportWizard XML export/import file format allows you to start service with the ASP model and easily move to your own server.

    Unless your knoweldgebase is so large that it takes a long time to download, the entire transfer can easily be accomplished during the lunch hour because it takes less than 7 minutes to install SupportWizard on your own server and 6 mouse clicks to export the entire knowledgebase to your local hard drive and import it.

    In addition to the XML file format, data can be also be exported in ASCII and Excel formats for migration to other programs.



ASP Traffic/bandwidth



    There are no limitations on traffic/bandwidth. This policy has been unchanged for over 8 years but we reserve the right to modify it if we notice excessive usage or abuse by a particular customer, but if we ever limit traffic/bandwidth, we will also provide the option to buy additional bandwidth.



ASP Storage space



    Each company is allocated a pool of 50M of space per staff user. For example, a company with 100 staff users would be allocated 5G of space. Additional space may be purchased for $25 per 100M per month



ASP Service Infrastructure



    In the USA, our ASP servers are co-located at Bay Area Internet Solutions which provides:

    • Carrier-class hosting facilities with customized design, expedient implementation, power and back-up power supplies, temperature and humidity controls and fire suppression systems

    • 24x7 Technical Services available on a time-used basis to support your equipment

    • 24x7 onsite physical security, including security guards, motion detectors, security cameras, individually locking cabinets and cages and card-key access

    • 24x7 monitoring of systems and services

    • 24-hour access with security escort. Further details are available from





ASP Security



    As shown in the above diagram, a firewall restricts server access and for customers who elect to use a dedicated server, we will be happy to configure a firewall to only allow access from specific IP addresses. Customers using a shared server can configure the KB to use a single signon capability restricted to their IP address, provided that their firewall allows the use Active-X controls from designated servers. Please also see our



ASP Service Hardware



    Our servers are configured with RAID 10 or RAID 50 hard drives, redundant power supplies, at least 6G of ECC RAM and at least two dual-core CPU's. In addition, they are actively monitored by remote programs that notify our 24/7 support services in the event of excessive response times or an outage.



ASP Service Backups



    By default, the system will take full backups of each knowledgebase every 24 hours. Knowledgbases can be configured for automatic backup as frequently as once per hour at an additional cost. Unless you are using your knowledgebase as a developer's sandpit and want the ability to reverse the effect of experiments, we do not recommend running backups more frequently than once per day.

    Backups are distributed to at least two seperate online servers and can be retrieved immediately our designated information security officers.



ASP System Restoration from Backup



    The time taken to restore a system from backup depends upon the size of the knowledgebase. A typical KB is a few hundred megabytes in size and takes less than twenty minutes. A KB that exceeded 10,000 megabytes (i.e. 10G) could take an hour or more.

    We always keep at least one spare server available to which a KB can be restored in the event that one of primary ASP servers dies. Over the past 7+ years, this facility has never been needed.



ASP Data Replication



    We offer a data replication facility with a server at a remote site on stand-by that may be brought up within 3 minutes in the event of an outage at the primary facility.



ASP Hotswap Servers



    We offer ASP servers configured as master/slave redundant pairs in which the slave takes over from the master within 2 minutes in the event of a catastrophic hardware failure. In over 8 years of active use, none of our ASP servers has suffered such an outage.



ASP DNS Resilience



    As part of our contract with XO Communications, they provide primary and secondary DNS servers, in addition to which we have our own dedicated DNS servers acting as backups.



ASP Uptime and Performance



    As detailed in our , we guarantee 99.9% uptime during working hours.

    Our monitoring software is configured to alert us if average CPU utilization on an ASP server exceeds 25% or the time required to bring up a simple record such as an Activity exceeds one second.

    We do not guarantee customer performance metrics such as refresh times because they depend upon the quality of the customer's internet connection and the knowledgebase configuration.




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