Below we describe, in simple and clear language, how our ERP systems are generally designed and what exactly the terms in common usage actually mean in the Ultima notional space.
This text is intended for our for actual and prospective users.
A formalized description of the system’s architecture for IT professionals is available on the specialized Ultimate Solid platform website.
What Is a Solution
In our terminology an ERP solution is understood to mean an ERP II class system that is ready for operation.
An installation means an Ultimate IEM solution implemented at an individual client’s place, with all their (both the solution’s and the client’s) individual features.
Each Ultima solution consists of three main parts:
- the Ultimate Solid platform;
- a configuration spread on top of the platform; and,
- optionally, components that extend the solution’s functionality.
The parts’ purpose can be most graphically described by analogy with the home PC.
The Windows operating system is similar to our platform.
The set of the Windows applications installed is the configuration.
The external projector, printer, and USB ash tray are components.
The ‘system’ and ‘solution’ terms in our texts are synonymous.
Phrases like ‘Ultima [name of configuration]’ mean ‘an Ultimate IEM solution based on the [name of configuration]’.
The Platform
Like the same version of Windows is absolutely identical on any computer, identical are copies of the same version of the Ultimate Solid platform deployed in different installations.
The platform encapsulates the ERP system’s kernel functionality required exclusively for application developers: database transactional integrity, access rights implementation and control, metadata storage and processing, configuration versioning, quick prototyping tools, object-relational mapping manager, and tools for automatic transaction conflict resolution, automatic generation of user forms, cluster support, updating clients’ applications, building reports, handling event queues (intra-system notifications, letter and SMS mailout, printout, etc.) – thousands of these.
The platform’s source code is closed.
Only members of the Ultima kernel development team work with it - exclusively.
A Configuration
Unlike the platform, a configuration implements the ERP solution’s business functionality: the documents, reports, scenarios, automatic processing, robots, etc. that are familiar to everyone.
Actually, the entire diversity described in the Implementation Results cases.
The configuration code is 100% open, and thus, fully available for changes and upgrades.
Our opinion that the combination of a proprietary platform and an open configuration is the best one for a business user is substantiated in a special text.
And if we limit our reasoning to just one phrase, then:
- the closed platform will keep your own programmers (and Ultima partners’ application programmers) from injecting fatal faults; while
- the open configuration enables you to implement any conceivable business logic/functionality, including connectivity to external devices and integration with external vendors’ software.
At the time of the publication, four Ultima configurations are available to our customers:
- Ultima 2C freeware;
- commercial industry-oriented eCommerceERP, eServiceERP, and IndustrialERP.
The Ultima 2C freeware has basic functionality, and commercial configurations have sufficient functionality.
The Ultima commercial configurations are actually assembly kits that are built on basic functionality to suit the specific customer’s needs. And the basic functionality can also be freely modified, becuse the configuration is open.
At the front-end design stage, the customer will point at our cases saying, ‘I want this, this and this, and a cool thing that you don’t write about, but I still want it.’
In the course of implementation proper, we re-assemble the programme code with the requested functionality from those installations where it is best implemented by now.
So at the time of launch the commercial Ultima configuration in the customer’s installation is the freshest collection of true best practices for a living and vibrant business.
As opposed to the rigid functionality of die-hard modular systems’ BC solutions that may be decades old.
Moreover.
The happy operator of a commercial Ultima configuration holds sort of an all-time key to a database of business knowledge, a.k.a. best practices, that is constantly updated; similarly, he will receive future cases’ functionality as it is developed, and pay for code transfer and integration only. He will have mastered the Darwinian evolution of business processes.
From the foregoing it naturally follows that each installation of our system has a unique configuration – unlike the platform that is fully standardized.
Components
Please remember that the Ultimate IEM solutions represent a new (and thus still infrequent, given the scale of the world IT industry) class of monolithic ERP systems – as opposed to the customary modular ones.
To find out what difference it makes for the user and why the difference is critical, see our special text again.
The Ultima components are NOT modules.
We draw a comparison again.
Imagine a PC network with a dedicated file server.
This is similar to a modular system: the server is the centre and the individual computers are the modules. The modules are self-contained systems that use their own logic and store and process data on their own. The server is mainly used to store porn information of common interest and in common access.
You can easily add ‘modules’ to the system or unplug them.
Such a system’s cohesion, self-consistence and resultant practical utility are fundamentally restricted by the capabilities of the data exchange protocol. And, which is no less important, by its individual modules’ ability to support that protocol correctly and trouble-free.
On the other hand, the Ultima components DO NOT exist separately and on their own.
They contain NO data whose loss would affect the integrity of the system’s common information field.
They implement NO business logic that could override or substitute the unified configuration’s business logic.
Like a club in a primeval ape man’s hand (by no means a ‘module’ of his body), they only add to the capabilities of the single modular system.
There can be software logic components (like Ultima eStore, a Web module for an online store) and hardware-and-software components, like Ultima WMS.
On a mundane level, the first type is equivalent to browser plugins, and the second type, to a medical diagnostic unit that connects to a PC.