 |
|
|
System Status
Status
Last updated 11:00 AM 11/05/2007 EST
| Service | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Internet Connectivity |  |
|
| Solve360 Web Application | |
|
| Email (filtering / delivery) | |
|
| Email (external IMAP/POP) | |
|
| Email (SMTP) | |
Scheduled Maintenance Events
| None at this time |
Technical support inquires can be made to support@norada.com
Storage Space Increases
Norada is committed to ensuring that Solve360 remains a best-of-breed service at a reasonable price. In support of this commitment to our customers, we regularly increase the amount of storage available to each user. Effective immediately, email storage allocations have doubled to 2GB for primary and standard accounts and 200mb for value accounts, and shared file storage has also doubled from 5GB to 10GB.
As always, it's not just how much data we store, but how we manage that data that makes Solve360 different from non-business class services such as Gmail, Hotmail and others. We know that your data is critical to your business, and we take extraordinary steps to ensure that all your information and files are safe. For example, to provide the highest level of recoverability in the event of a system failure, we maintain at least 3 versions of your data in our redundant production systems at all times. Even if our primary system completely failed, we'd still have two complete versions of all your data running on backup systems. In addition, we take regular "snapshots" of all your data, which ensures that should the need ever arise to recover a lost file - say an email that has been inadvertently deleted by you or someone on your team - we can go back into a snapshot and recover it. And for those organizations that require full email archiving, we have cost-effective plans designed to meet a range of business and regulatory requirements.
We go the extra distance so you can sleep well at night, secure in the knowledge that your data is safe. Frankly, we're not sure how users of those other non-business class services ever get any shut-eye.
Service Upgrades
Our Engineering team will be implementing software and hardware upgrades to our hosting environment. These changes will occur during non-prime time over the next two-three weeks and provide the following benefits:A Framework For The Future
One of the cornerstones of Solve360 is invisible to users. It's the core platform upon which the Solve360 feature set has been built, and it's been carefully constructed and nurtured over the past few years. When we brought the first iteration of our product to market, the fledgling Web application services industry was mistakenly lumped in with ASP. Many of the early applications were slow and unreliable; hastily constructed IT science projects cobbled together from legacy server and desktop code and dumped into a hostile online environment. We took a different path. We built our SaaS product from scratch, inventing approaches which later turned out to be best practice for browser-delivered apps, because there was no other way then to get the functionality and reliability that are required to deliver a complex service like Solve360.
It's only because we had a solid platform as a starting point that we've been able to extend the depth and breadth of Solve360 functionality over the past few years, creating a truly integrated online communication and collaboration solution that continues to deliver best-in-class features and uptime. However, the Web app development world of 2006 looks a whole lot different than it did in 2001. Standards on all fronts have evolved and matured, open source has moved from the fringes into the mainstream, and smart coders have been hooking up with savvy biz dev guys to identify and address opportunities in the growing on-demand services arena.
One of the areas that is beginning to get a lot of attention from developers is framework development, and the armies of change have been on the battlefield just long enough that some winning strategies are emerging. In Web War I (1995-2004), we spent countless hours in the development trenches to gain a few inches of functional ground. Web War II isn't being fought in the trenches; the big battles are being waged on open source ground, with the added wrinkle that development ordnance from the distant programming past is being dusted off, polished up and put back into service. As an example, Model-View-Controller (MVC), a somewhat elaborate scheme of organizing code within an application originally used in mainframe applications in the '80s, has recently been reworked for the Web and is gaining increasing popularity as a modern, best-practice architecture for online applications. The primary benefit of MVC is improving the extensibility of the application you're developing and making changes easier to manage.
MVC relies on sets of common procedures, making it possible to abstract and reuse these procedures in what's called a framework. Using MVC requires the engineering team to put a lot of thought into the application's architecture, which can dramatically increase robustness, code reuse, and organization. With a complex application like Solve360 there are massive benefits in adopting the MVC approach: decreased code duplication, increased coherence and clarity, reduced bugs, better separation of files and application access for improved security, faster development time, and easier testing, to name a few.
As we set out on our Solve360 upgrade journey, our critical need was finding a framework solution that would allow us to retain all our existing functions, while opening the door to extending our feature set to include other arm's length Web services as well as additional functionality we'll create ourselves. We believe that an on-demand service's ability to seamlessly interoperate with other online applications is a prerequisite to survive and thrive in Web War II, so we went on a quest to find a framework partner that supports our development and business objectives. The framework itself also had to meet the following criteria:
Zend's Framework (which uses the MVC model) is an open source project with an existing code base that mapped well to what we needed to do. There's also real philosophical and strategic agreement between Zend and Norada on where we're headed. "We believe that the sky is the limit and will continue to collaborate with others in the industry around component architecture, framework tooling...enabling interoperability with third party solutions, and facilitating easy consumption of Web Service providers' APIs," says Zend on their Framework site.
We're confident Zend is properly organized and structured, and also has the financial wherewithal and market high ground required to become a major force in the Web application market. At this stage, it's difficult to imagine, much less predict, what will occur when dozens - or scores - of symbiotic web app solution providers like Norada begin to truly leverage each others' code and customer bases. By relying on Zend and other frameworks to handle a host of standard functions, we'll be in a position to focus our resources on taking new ground, and finding innovative ways to solve problems for customers.
What it will all mean to the existing Application World Order is anyone's guess. What we do know is that all the work we've done over the past 8 years has positioned us to be in the thick of the decisive battle that's coming. Bring it on.
Leading The Evolution
OK, consider this the official announcement: we expect to release a new version of Solve360 in about 100 days. As outlined in a previous post by Norada's Steve Ireland, the new version will feature significant interface and performance improvements, and has been hugely influenced by feedback and suggestions from customers.
Instead of teasing users with hints about what Solve360 will look like and do, then staging a "pull the cover off the new version" event, we're going to do regular posts and updates as we approach launch date.
Of course it's not possibly to engineer a major upgrade to an application as complex as Solve360 in just a few months. The preliminary planning and development work began in earnest about 16 months ago, more or less coinciding with the emergence in the marketplace of the notion that something called Web 2.0 was coming. While hype and media spin quickly encrusted the Web 2.0 idea and sapped it of any meaning, the tenets that anchor the next Solve360 to the future emerged based on fundamental changes we saw driving the Internet application environment.
The tenets are simple and powerful:
The Web Is The New Desktop
Over the past couple of years, it's become commonplace to leave a browser and tabbed sites/apps running all day. As SaaS (Software as a Service) continues gaining acceptance, there will be a gradual shift in usage patterns until, perhaps a couple of years out, we all discover we're spending more time working from the browser than installed apps running off a local hard drive. For many of our users, this shift has already occurred: with reliable, abundant bandwidth available at low cost, faith that solid security models are in place, and the knowledge that their data is safer on our network drives than their LAN or local disk, they work all day long in Solve360. The new version will erase the lingering interface artifacts of the current generation of Web apps, making the usage experience virtually indistinguishable from a best-of-breed installed application. Technically, we accomplish this by AJAX-enabling the entire front end of the application and optimizing the back end databases and servers to dramatically increase overall speed and usability; functionally, it means instantaneous response to user inputs with no wait time for pages to refresh or data to be served up from the network drives. As we get closer to launch, we'll show you what this looks like in various areas of Solve360 rather than attempting to paint the picture with words.
Web Apps Must Be Able To Interact With Other Web Apps
Solve360 is distinguished from other email, calendaring and contact management solutions in the way it shares data between functional areas of the application, effectively bringing together multiple tools within a single interface. When properly designed, and constructed in line with a set of robust standards, the model can extend to bring other Web functions and services under the Solve360 umbrella. At launch, we'll have the capability to handle RSS and launch Google Maps from a contact's address field, and we're working with partners to integrate back office services ranging from spreadsheets to full accounting systems. While there's really no limit to the kinds of additional services that can be brought in the Solve360 environment, we'll be moving carefully to ensure that any service we offer enhances the value of our solution to our customers.
Your Apps Should Do Things Your Way
Many Solve360 users rely heavily on one or two areas of the application, such as contacts and email, and work with many of the same features in the same way day after day. Until recently, the nature of the Web forced us to force you to log into Solve360 and navigate through multiple menus before you could tuck into the tasks you needed to complete. The next morning (or at home that night) you had to log back in again, make the same menu selections, etc. There is a better way, or rather there will be in the next version of Solve360. In the new version, when you log in and set up the application to work the way you like it, we'll remember your preferences. The next time you log in, your Solve360 desktop will look exactly the way you left it, and you can pick up right where you left off in your previous session. We'll also allow you to have the multiple windows you use most often to be on your desktop simultaneously, and a change in one window that affects data in another window will be instantaneously updated. The above are just a couple of representative examples of how we're turning over control of the application interface to our users. The old model of forcing ever more complex nested functionality into never-ending menus, toolbars and icons, was born and will die with desktop applications. Going forward, well-written Web apps will employ a variety of techniques to ease the burden of use placed on customers. The idea of an "intuitive interface" will mean it makes sense to you, because you're able to set up your workspace to function your way. All the tools and functionality you use only occasionally (or perhaps never) are still available but no longer cluttering up your desktop or getting in the way of getting work done.
In rethinking and redeveloping Solve360 to embrace the above three tenets, we've taken an evolutionary approach that builds on the features and platform we've have honed over the last two versions of the product. We're confident, and our users have confirmed, that we've got a lot of the functionality and tools right over the last couple of development cycles. Where the new version crosses over into revolutionary territory is how we're leaving behind the framework and interface constraints of the current Web that force users into one-dimensional, linear, hierarchical applications in favor of a mutli-layered, openly configurable environment.
Something's Afoot
While we haven't made an official announcement, many of our customers have figured out that we're working on an upgrade to Solve360.
The improvements will be significant and are focused on three primary objectives:
The Solve360 features you know and trust won't change, but the application will be easier to use, with an interface and performance unmatched by anything else out there.
We're grateful to our customers who have spent time working with us polishing the features on the current version, figuring out what's important for the next version, and helping us understand what better really means.
The release date for the update is still a couple of months away, and the plan is to run the current version and the updated Solve360 simultaneously for a period of time to allow users to get comfortable with the changes before switching over.
If you'd like to catch an early glimpse of the changes just drop us your email address:
Solve360 - The simplest way to manage your team, email, and customers.
Contact Database Update
Is your team using Solve360's powerful CRM / Contact Database Manager? If so, you'll notice some exciting changes have been implemented:
The improvements are primarily within Accounts, Contacts, Calendar and Tasks. An explanation of how data can be shared, linked and categorized is available here.
Speed, Speed, Speed
Completing Common Tasks Gets Faster
There's no need to do anything different and no functionality has changed. You'll simply find that Solve360 completes your commands faster.
By using advanced coding techniques that eliminate the click-then-wait of traditional Web applications, Solve360 has achieved the speed and interactivity previously only possible with installed software.
Storage Space Enhancements
Your Email quota and File quota have been merged into a single consolidated Storage quota. Storage is now dynamically assigned to the area you need it. You can check your total storage limit and current usage on the Today page. This change has automatically been made available to all Solve360 users. You do not need to configure anything to enable it.
Norada Also Provides a 1 GB Storage Option
Increase your total account storage to 1GB (1,000 MB). A 10X increase over the standard storage limit means you may never need to delete a message again. More ...
Address AutoComplete
This feature helps you address Mail messages by suggesting matches from your Solve360 Contact database as you type. Open a new mail message, click in the "To" text box:New Features & Services
Email Archiving
Get a permanent copy of all email sent and received within your company on CD/DVD. Equivalent to a "flight-data recorder" for email, our Email Archive service can be intantly activated, requires nothing to install, and is fully automatic and transparent to users. More ...
Outlook Email Sync *
Users can now keep all of their Solve360 folders sync'd up with Outlook - no special effort or installed software is required. Access the same email messages from multiple computers, work offline, import and archive email as needed. More ...
1GB Secure Storage
Increase account storage to 1GB (1,000 MB) and keep everything safe in one central place. A 10X increase over the standard storage provides enough space that users may never need to delete a message again. More ...
* Available to all Workgroup level subscribers at no additional cost
