EQuIS Enterprise Comes to AMEC

Greetings:

In the last month we set up an EQuIS server at AMEC's data center in Atlanta in preparation for EQuIS Enterprise. We're really excited about Enterprise because it will allow project team members across the globe to access their data via the web.  As Portland continues to provide environmental data management support to more and more AMEC offices the biggest request we get is for direct access to current data. As I've written before, we provide weekly tables for some projects, and recently have been providing Excel Workbook front-ends (which have been very popular). However, Enterprise will be light years ahead of those solutions because the team members will have access all sorts of reports, and can even drill down into the data.

We're also hoping that the ability for labs to email EDDs directly to Enterprise for automated loading will pan out. As has been written much before, a good mature technology is one you don't notice. With that in mind, we use many different labs with widely varying abilities to create good EDDs. I'm anticipating that uploading success will range from seamless to "Holy Cow!! GET it together!". I know of one really good lab that I'm confident will be able to make it work. We NEVER have problems loading their EDDs into EQuIS Professional. I'll definitely shout out kudos to them once I confirm their mad skills uploading EDDs to Enterprise. Conversely, we work with another well-known lab that CANNOT get it right, even when our lab contract includes financial penalties for delays caused by bad EDDs.

Even without Enterprise set up yet, the move to Atlanta has significantly sped up EQuIS access for the off-site AMEC offices we support.  User access to the old server here in Portland was throttled by our relatively limited bandwidth as compared to the giant data pipes channeled into the data center.

Enhanced data security is another upside to moving the databases to Atlanta. Here in Portland I'd set up an automated daily data backup script that created a backup volume for any database on the server. However, the backups were stored locally on the server. Because the server didn't have its own AMEC account I was unable to set up an automatic method to transfer the files to another hard drive. So, every Monday morning Medora moved the files manually to another computer in case the server crashed and burned. The local backup files on the server were copied to a tape drive every night as well. Our databases in Atlanta now get a full backup four times a day and the backups are stored at third-party data center in another state. I feel pretty good about that! Four times a day definitely exceeds our needs.

Back to Enterprise: As of today I've got an virtual client server set up for the Enterprise install. The virtual server will serve as a client to the data server. I've got all the EQuIS databases upgraded to v5.5 and am ready to dive in with the Enterprise set-up. I'll keep you posted.

Dan