Cohga’s Weave business integration framework is proving to be a very cost effective replacement for Australia’s ageing EView system with a number of Australian councils making the change so far and many others are considering changing. While EView was a great product in its day the technology and architecture of the product is old and no longer fits a modern council’s need for systems integration and web mapping. In addition their supplier no longer develops EView which puts organisations at risk and increases the costs of running an ageing system.
The architects and developers of EView are those who left to become the core of Cohga and who built a second generation system in the form of Weave, which means the upgrade from EView to Weave is an easy and quick process. “We have been able to migrate client configurations from EView to Weave in as little as one day” said Shaun Forbes, one of the architects. “Having a deep knowledge of the EView architecture has allowed us to develop a set of tools to transfer the significant investment our clients made in the configuration of EView into Weave in a very rapid and cost effective manner.”
Aaron van Herk, the other key architect, says “Our experience with clients that migrate from EView to Weave is that they are happier as they now have a modern, open and flexible technology solution with a lower cost of ownership.” Aaron goes on to say “We are continually excited and encouraged by the innovative solutions our clients develop once they have the means to do so. Given that we have a client driven road map for Weave we are happy to include client innovations into the core Weave product thus making them available to the whole Weave community.”
Examples of the Councils that have upgraded from EView to Weave to date include the large councils of City of Melbourne and City of Greater Geelong.
Please contact Cohga for more information on how your organisation can benefit from moving to Weave.
Benefits of Weave
Increased return on investment in data
With a short implementation cycle, Weave provides online access to spatial and other database content to all authorised users (role based access control). As a result, the information can be quickly made available to a wide range of staff without significantly increasing the administrative overhead, and with an improvement of the return obtained from the data.
The powerful database integration capabilities provide the foundation for the creation of value added information products, enhancing the use of the data, and the value of that data to the organisation.
Increased revenue generation
Rapid visualisation and the cross-linking of data means that existing corporate data stores can be tested for accuracy and compatibility. Each individual database can be validated against others. More reliable data leads to improved quality of service and better client satisfaction, which can result in higher revenue generation.
Spatial data can be made accessible to other stakeholders such as customers, business partners and suppliers, featuring in visually compelling e-commerce applications.
Capital cost savings
The utilisation of a development environment well accepted in the IT world (OSGi, J2EE, Ajax, JSON, SQL, XML) allows the IT group to administer the system without the need for specialised knowledge, leading to overall capital cost savings.
The use of free Web browsers as the interface to the integrated data allows organisations to deliver the information to a wider range of staff without additional costs. The cost per seat is kept low and the system is extensible.
The Weave server supports internal users as well as users or customers on the Internet. Another licence to support such separated activity does not need to be purchased. In addition the Weave server is not licensed per user, and can be used to the maximum activity that the infrastructure can support.
Further savings can be achieved by minimising the number of applications required throughout the organisation. This is typical of places using desktop applications for inquiry and reporting, which Weave replaces with a web browser, saving maintenance dollars.
Increased productivity
The easily configurable SQL/XML interface facilitates the rapid fulfilment of “change requests”, e.g. change a search; integrate more databases, create new reports, etc. This reduces IT staff workload and enables improved productivity in the broader workforce.
The facility provided to all users for the generation of reports relieves specialist staff of the associated workload. This allows the specialist staff to focus their activities on tasks more aligned with their business objectives such as data maintenance and improvement that are likely to benefit a wider audience.
Users only require a web browser for accessing Weave, while providing significant introductory and analytical GIS capabilities (e.g. buffer, geographic feature selection, reporting), which can significantly increase staff productivity.
Output from Weave can be easily incorporated into company documents. It takes little time to implement a user-specified search, report, or map, thereby significantly improving staff productivity and the effectiveness of presentation material.
Managers are provided with a much improved view of the organisation’s corporate data, as Weave makes the key elements of the business visible through a more integrated view of the business information. This results in faster and better informed decision making.
Operational cost savings
New users are productive using the default Weave client interface within minutes, as it is highly intuitive. This represents a major cost saving compared with the training required to use traditional desktop applications provided by the decision support systems currently in use.
Staff qualified through a three-day training course can administer Weave. This enables organisations to avoid the outsourcing of this activity if desired. This can lead to operational cost savings through reduced system administration costs.
By encapsulating the linkages between various corporate datasets in a simple, open SQL/XML system, business rules are captured and preserved, holding business knowledge openly within the application itself, not fractured by groups or personalities, and helping to minimise retraining costs in the case of staff loss or transfer.
Cohga’s Weave technology has been recognised as an industry leading solution, winning multiple awards.