Monday, January 20, 2014

Internet Ecosystem

Do you still go to banks when E-banking is available, allowing you to pay your bills and make e-transfers with a fingers’ snap? Do you still flip through dictionaries to search for the meaning of some incomprehensible words, when you’re holding an iPad? Or do you even still stop to ask for directions, when the GPS can guide you through and through?

That’s how Internet has permeated our daily life. When you know the Internet can help in a much easier way, why bother with the conventional?
How to build Internet Ecosystem for Business?
We use the same approach to build our Internet-friendly ecosystem for business. Why bother with the conventional way, when you have a broadband superhighway? After years of practice, with bits and bytes replacing brick and mortar, we have built quite an effective ecosystem, handling all the processes online.

It’s easier to build a normal Internet ecosystem. You have the time and liberty to consider and fine-tune the system. You can always fall back to some conventional methods, for example, if the Google Adword advertising is not up to your expectation, old media is still waiting in line to grab your ad money. The modular subsystems can either be plugged or unplugged and still be played. Or you can have both, if they’re not contradicting each other.

SaaS Provider: Holistically Internet Proven Ecosystem  
But when our TimeTec Cloud was introduced, we have not the slightest of such luxury in options. When it comes to SaaS (Software as a Service), the comparison of both ecosystems is like David and Goliath. You may just offer a tiny part of any workflow solution to your customers, but as a SaaS provider, your operation must be holistically Internet environment proven.



No subsystems can be segregated; they must be highly integrated. No fallback plan is allowed. A forefront web portal is also an entrance for customers to log in to its applications, also the threshold for resellers to check their sales status and manage their customers.  The admin page has to extract data for further analysis. A lot of modules and sub-modules work together to form a SaaS; database, platform, analysis, security, marketing, technical support, management, CDN, and etc.; they hold together in solidarity like a piece of PCB board, every chip has its dedicated functionality.  

We were lucky to gain our admission ticket to enter the time and attendance industry from biometrics hardware by solving buddy-punching problem. SaaS is another opportunity for us to transform the industry. And now, as almost every employee carries a smart phone, employers are forcing more enterprise Apps into the handheld gadget.  How an integrated Cloud solution attaches the detached mobility with more great features is becoming yet another competition in the enterprise solutions.

The race is on. I believe our ecosystem counts.