Article: The Portus Platform
The Power Under the Hood – the Portus Platform
The Portus platform is the foundational engine of our solution. We spent the first two years of our existence strictly on the platform elements and we have continued to perfect it throughout our history.
The platform includes “under the hood” functions and libraries that make the eventual analytics possible, including:
Data Connectivity
Our platform includes highly evolved methodologies to connect to a myriad of data sources
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- On premise or cloud based
- Database SQL Queries or web services
- Oracle®, SQL Server, MySQL and others
Data Mining
Our platform includes an extensive library and in-depth expertise of all the ERP engines with which we interoperate. We know their data structures, table definitions and use models inside and out. Because of this core strength, our customers do not have to spend any time and resources connecting our solution to the underlying data and then instructing it on how to understand the data. All the data acquisition is built in and ready to go on day one.
Data Warehousing
Our platform includes advanced methodologies to take highly efficient, surgical snap shots of some of the data that we access and store them on a regular schedule. While most of the output analytics in Portus are based on a real time access of the underlying data source, there are many situations where significantly more analytical power can be achieved by also being able to look back at snapshots of historical data.
Algorithm Engine
We have an extensive library and very specialized talent to produce complex analytic algorithms. Algorithms go way beyond simple two-dimensional presentations of data. They involve ultra-efficient recursive calculations on a dataset. The best example of an algorithm is an MRP Netting algorithm which must traverse multiple layers of a bill of material and match supply with demand and then continue the calculation. As an example, our core MRP Algorithm can run a comprehensive MRP on a dataset of over 100,000 individual BOM lines, spanning over 3,000 unique part number in less than 3 seconds.
Advanced User Administration
Portus comes equipped with an advanced User Administration module that allows for surgical control of “who can see what.” With an easy to user interface administrators can control which reports are available to which user and even within a report which sensitive pieces of information are available to which users. Along the years our administration policies have been strengthened through stringent audits by our customers. Passwords are stored encrypted, we have included strong countermeasures to eliminate the possibility of SQL intrusion through the log in process, user sessions are individually controlled and a multiple of other safeguards have been put in place to provide a flexible and secure browser-based solution to our customers.
Web Application Expertise
The delivery of the final Portus solution is dependent on the careful coordination of several technologies including
- Web Server Implementation and Optimization
- .NET
- HTML5
- JavaScript
- C#
Our platform includes highly evolved libraries encompassing all these technologies and the know-how of how to combine them in an efficient and harmonious way to bring the most power and usability to our solutions.
Domain Expertise
Portus is purpose built. This means all the analytics are pre-built and ready to go. Everything about them has been engineered for maximum impact. Which columns are displayed in what order, what happens when you hover over elements, which fields will have pre-built drill downs and what those drill downs will look like, etc. The orchestration of the presentation and how it is layered through continuous drill downs has been perfected over the years through feedback from a diverse customer base all using our analytics in real production settings. All this domain expertise is built into the Portus platform and immediately available to our customers.
