Caché gives Time Cost Solutions fast-time-to-market with object technology

Key Benefits

• Object Technology
• Web Technology
• Worldwide presence

Market opportunities challenge developers. If an application can't be developed quickly enough to take advantage of the opportunity, good-bye growth. Auckland, New Zealand-based Time Cost Solutions, Ltd. was faced with such a situation. The InterSystems VAR, specializing in financial accounting software, was formed specifically to pursue business from importers and distributors. TCS will also be targeting consulting engineers for time/cost accounting. "We uncovered a lucrative opportunity," said Colleen George, managing director of TCS. "Because of the change in direction of a company using a legacy application, we estimated we could pick up number of clients in the New Zealand and Australian market if we were quick enough to develop a product."

In response to the challenge TCS built its Object Relational Caché Accounting (O.R.C.A.) application with Caché object technology in 12 months. While, it was tempting to use existing designs, George and her team decided to make a fresh start using Caché. Caché object technology enables rapid application development by supporting inheritance, encapsulation, and polymorphism. Object technology also promotes a more naturalistic view of the world, allowing developers to describe the way humans actually think and work, rather than restricting data to simple, computer-centric data types. For this reason, object technology can make it easier for developers to quickly build useful and meaningful data models. "Using Caché, we were able to develop a dynamic suite of customizable financial modules. O.R.C.A. presents the user with more than the required portability, ease-of-use, and customization they need to tailor their individual requirements," said George.

"With Caché, we took advantage of the fastest data storage environment with built-in application development tools."

-- Colleen George
Managing Director
Time Cost Solutions, Ltd.

George and her staff examined other database products, and while they chiefly were concerned about a technology's performance and its ability to do transaction processing, cost-effectiveness and ease-of-use were important considerations as well. Indeed, TCS's customers are demanding, and a short list of their IT requirements shows just how so. They want both graphical and character-based interfaces. They don't want to see any increases in their costs when implementing new technology. They want to continue using their current networks-typically networks running at a 9600-baud rate supporting six concurrent users. And finally, they don't want to see a drop in performance.

"The costs associated with goods in New Zealand tend to run high," said George, explaining the reasoning behind her customers' stringent demands. "Our customers need affordable solutions. Caché gives us a cost advantage over our competitors because it runs faster on significantly smaller and cheaper platforms than other products." And Caché is simple to maintain so it doesn't require enormous staffs of administrators, further reducing costs.

Caché object technology was invaluable to TCS as the VAR worked to deliver the application. "We built O.R.C.A. entirely with Caché object design tools, including a character interface that uses the same data source as our Web and ActiveX exposure," explained George. Caché object technology allowed TCS to build an application that can be deployed in character mode, client/server, or as Web-based depending on a customer's preference. The application simply broadcasts the data to the appropriate interface at runtime. TCS also accomplished the extraordinary feat of achieving greater throughput over the same network, thereby exceeding customer expectation.

"With Caché, we took advantage of the fastest data storage environment with built-in application development tools," said George. "Caché gave us a lot of flexibility and power as we built O.R.C.A. The integration of Caché with Java Script provided a powerful interface using standard Web browsing technologies, and Caché's support of SQL and ODBC enabled external access to data for easy report generation using standard applications like Crystal Reports."

Caché's support of foreign currency and languages will assist TCS in growing off-shore. "We see a tremendous growth opportunity through InterSystems' worldwide VAR network," said George. "Co-operative alliances with other Caché VARs will provide TCS with a worldwide presence."