3.3 Business Center
The Business Centre provides outsourced applications services on an e- business platform for clients who do not wish to execute and maintain the application on their own site.
There is a need for integrated applications that satisfy the modern mechanisms of conducting business in an online transactional manner. The nature of the business environment where various stakeholders need to collaborate and co-ordinate complex inter-party business and financial transactions renders traditional internal systems obsolete, unintegrated and unwieldy.
What are required are systems that break the traditional boundaries, where systems and businesses are able to interoperate seamlessly with one another. Applications within the Business Centre are architected without a bias towards a particular stakeholder, allowing many stakeholders to co-ordinate their transactions in a way that is meaningful and contextualized for each individual stakeholder. The Business Centre provides the platform whereby these services are:
    • Online : in order to interface with the relevant stakeholders
    • Available : so that business is not interrupted
    • Integrated : to facilitate the easy and fast processing of all business transactions
The Infomet Business Centre hosts a set of integrated applications and services that run on Infomet’s e-Business platform, using the GBM core modules to provide the necessary functionality. The hosted services and applications within the centre include:
    • Stakeholder applications, which are used for
      o Single client view applications
      o Deal participation of suppliers, clients and intermediaries
    • Financial Management Reporting
    • Compliance Reporting including Regulatory Compliance
    • Collaboration technologies such as
      o Project execution and control
      o Workflow
      o JAD
The Business Centre is situated at Infomet’s offices in Sandton and at its primary databases run on large multi processor Itanium servers. Smaller Xeon servers are used for the application. The platform is configured for maximum uptime with redundant equipment and air conditioners, UPS and generator power. The Business Centre Network is segregated from the rest of the network so that the 1GB switching is not overloaded with non-critical traffic.
Within the Business Centre, security receives complete and continuous focus in order to prevent intrusion, exploitation of data and the inappropriate use of the applications. Security is implemented across all levels from physical security on the site to data level access control. The Business Centre is interfaced to the rest of the network and the Internet using internal and perimeter firewalls that are constantly updated, monitored and reviewed in order to prevent unauthorised access to any resources on the network.
Key to the running of large database applications is the ability of the platform to perform at the required level. The applications in the Business Centre are configured for performance and run on high performance individual servers and server clusters in order to respond the load that may be placed on the system during peak periods.
Technical staff is constantly available to operate and monitor the systems within the Business Centre, always ensuring that the systems are performing optimally, monitoring server status, deploying applications and the like.
Clients making use of the Business Centre are those that require a solid, functional set of applications for e-Business based functions that they do not wish to buy, build or operate on their own. Additionally these clients demand that their business transactions run on the same infrastructure as the stakeholders with whom they are doing business.
Costing models for hosting within the Business Centre are based around fixed monthly costs and/or fees per transaction performed within the Business Centre.

Pieter Viljoen Jr
E Mail: pieter.viljoen@infomet.com
Mobile: +27 82 568 9742
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