ServiceCentral Technology & Architecture
ServiceCentral's n-tier, distributed architecture utilizes the latest technologies to present a powerful set of secure web applications and web services built on a common layer of scalable application services and an enterprise class database. All ServiceCentral web applications share a common framework built on the latest technologies, such as ASP.NET and AJAX, to provide a rich, high-performance user experience. The flexibility to do deploy the ServiceCentral distributed components in a variety of ways allows ServiceCentral to tailor each installation to meet the specific feature and performance requirements at hand.
Architecture
ServiceCentral Technologies employees an n-tier, distributed architecture model. ServiceCentral applications are based on Microsoft .NET technology, using components in each of the tiers to perform common functions and provide isolation of the application layers. Remote presentation access is provided in a standard web browser via HTTP/HTTPS communication to the application tier for flexibility and security.
Scalability
Scalability is achieved through application level workload management and clustering as well as intelligent load balancing that spreads the workload of the Web server, Application server, and the Database Server across multiple machines with different platforms, configurations and levels of redundancy.
High Availability & Performance
ServiceCentral's n-tier architecture allows for significant high availability capabilities. The hardware specified enables multiple application and report servers to be load balanced, thus achieving high availability, optimal performance and fail-over capabilities throughout the application layers. Additionally, ServiceCentral offers customers the option to perform their Reporting against a real-time replicated production database.
Application Recovery & Contingency
ServiceCentral uses a second database server for redundancy and Oracles high availability features for non-intrusive back-ups. Standard disaster recovery techniques for any mission critical system can be applied to the technical infrastructure if required (i.e. hot back up sites). Additionally, ServiceCentral’s n–tier architecture employs a stateless session concept similar to most Internet-based applications which store state in the database and allow the user to continue their session regardless of failure of any application layer.
Deployment Configurations
Due to the nature of the n-tier architecture ServiceCentral applications have been deployed in multiple configurations to support scalability and redundancy requirements. Small implementations often include all tiers on a single server while large implementations include multiple servers for any given tier to ensure adequate performance and failover.
Accessibility
ServiceCentral's entire service management software suite is 100 percent web-based, simply requiring a standard web browser (ex. Firefox or Microsoft Internet Explorer) for users to access the application; including mobile devices. To ensure quick and accurate data entry, barcode technology & scanners are often utilized throughout process workflows. To support global operations the ServiceCentral suite provides multi-language capability in both Latin 1 and double-byte character sets.
Software Development Methodology
ServiceCentral employs a standard Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) methodology for developing new releases of its software. Key deliverables that are made available to the customer include: Product Roadmap, Release Notes, Installation Documentation and Object Code.
