Hi, I don't normally post in this catagory, but I'm looking for some 'elp! I've got a meeting in the morning regarding a new web based application being integrated. My role is to sit in and enquire about web based issues and concerns. I'm asking for help because I don't really want to miss anything. Not covering all bases makes me nervous! Talking generally... I've covered the standard issues of hosting,security,backup,mirroring,downtime,speed etc etc, but was hoping you guys might give me some extra pointers to think about. It's a large project, moving an offline ordering and inventory system for a large company onto a web based one. For what it's worth, I think it's a bad idea, but the powers that be know better and want to spend £150k!!. Any other bases I should be covering in this advisory role that has been thrust on me, just because I'm the companies SEO? Thanks, Martin
I'm no expert but hard to say without real info. Is this a totally in-house ordering system that will work among branches or is it for consumers & online customers? There must be a basic reason for it which we are not privy to so it's hard to work out the risks/potential problems.
It is totally inhouse. At the moment we have an offline inventory/invoicing/stock control system which is the core of the business. In fairness it is outdated and this new web based app has more functionatlity and is written for manufacturers and industrial companies especially. It's purely for members of staff. Hope that helps and thanks for the reply
As I say, I have no experience here but there must be a reason for it I guess. Does this link depos/branches, I presume they see some future benefit by converting to a web based system, it certainly opens doors if they have various branches etc. You have most things covered When I have seen these implemented locally the thing that often crops up is when the whole system goes down, where is the backup plan. For example there is a really nice Inn/restaurant on the edge of Aberdeen that I like to frequent, their system went down and yes they could take our food order and drinks order, they couldn't charge it and seemes a little lost. So my main worry would be hard copies/records and dealing with the process "if" it totally died and went down. Computers are great when they work, but when they don't.......
i'd ask about redundancy and recovery too. it's like: yes, you've got backup, but does it mean that the system goes down for every small failure? what are you putting in place to make sure that only a major failure causes downtime (e.g. you can have clustering), and when there's downtime, how fast can you bring it back online.