G-CLOUD - OCTANE WEB AND API MONITORING

User Friendly

The OCTANE platform allows even non-developers to automate user scenarios through recording of user interactions, whether on websites or desktop applications with the ORQA robotic agent. These can be uploaded to the OCTANE platform which can execute these tests distributed across nodes of any type, including the ability to test against different browser types, browser versions, screen sizes, devices, and operating systems.

Metrics and Monitoring

The rich analytics dashboard allows teams to get a consolidated view of behaviour and customise tools according to their specific environment. Metrics and monitoring that may be implemented include: checking disk space, CPU, and memory usage; response times to HTTP requests; page load times; correctness of display in different browsers, versions, devices, screen sizes and operating system; responsiveness of site under load; business transaction simulations.

Platform Flexibility

The OCTANE platform can be implemented anywhere: in private or hybrid cloud, or on any cloud IaaS vendor platforms (including UKCloud, Azure and AWS) and run as a Managed Service (SaaS-style) or in cooperation with client staff or partners. Our consultants can work with you to design private implementations and to determine appropriate cloud platform choices, or you may wish to utilise our public cloud instances for out-of-the-box solutions without requiring any consultancy, working on a pure licence basis.

Record and Playback

ORQA's record and playback functions allow any user to record scenarios for websites and desktop applications and use these as metrics for complex business interactions. For example, one may record the process for signing up a new user, creating and running a customised search, and downloading the results to a PC.

Such a process can be recorded once, parameterised to change data over time if required, and uploaded to OCTANE to be run on a scheduled basis, providing a full history of real performance observed by the users of your service.

Figure 2 - Design your own process integrations and web monitoring processes

Alerts and Notifications

A powerful alerting and notification system allows all such monitoring metrics to be handled as you wish with email alerts, social media integration, web service API and dashboard graphical notifications to ensure service levels are met 24 hours a day.

Response Actions

With ORQA automation you can even record recovery or response actions to take place when certain situations are observed, which further expands the abilities of your system to recover from abnormal situations. For example, you may wish to archive certain log files should free disk space be getting low.

System Integrations

Integrations with issue and defect tracking systems are also possible with ORQA, ensuring that observations in production are always appropriately tracked in the development organisation with the relevant details.

The ORQA tool can be used to interactively run customised Gherkin / Cucumber tests locally and then upload them to the cloud for scheduled execution and rich monitoring of web applications.

Compliance and Compatibility

OCTANE allows users to customise access to data of various sensitivity levels and includes a platform that permits connectivity to the UK government's PSN with either our cloud-hosted SaaS or fully-managed hybrid / private cloud installations, regardless of whether they are run on Azure, AWS, UKCloud, or other platforms (subject to appropriate accreditation according to data classification level and user environment).

User Administration and Application Security

The OCTANE web application is a security solution that's been accredited for use in various public-sector projects for data up to OFFICIAL-SENSITIVE in public cloud installations. The four-tier structure follows a blueprint for segregation of data that satisfies the highest public cloud infrastructure requirements in the UK public sector today.

Intrusion detection, active monitoring, firewalls and web traffic filtering further protects the system and OCTANE offers a web interface utilising the latest web server security and encryption standards, achieving an A+ in the Qualys SSL Labs analysis.

OCTANE regularly goes through independent penetration tests in addition to our own automated security analysis.

Data Control and Security

OCTANE uses strong role-based access control (RBAC) weaved throughout the entire framework at a foundational level and uses APIs to further segregate workloads and data permissions. In addition, a strong, permission-based object model can allow clients to further extend the data models to be customised precisely for their particular needs, allowing rich reports and real-time dashboarding.

Several logical organisations can also sit within the same distribution and operate entirely independently, allowing large-scale usage and sharing amongst teams and departments. Standard security principles like 'least-access' and 'deny-by-default' are built-in.

Access to the system can include restrictions across functions (horizontal) and within certain records inside data sets (vertical), limiting the rights and ability for different areas to affect each other. In-built sharing functionality permits views and dashboards to be managed and shared amongst users and groups of users in any combination (itself governed by customisable permissions). These are all made available for customisation by the client according to specific requirements.

Modern Technical Platform

OCTANE is based upon best-of-breed open source technologies and we embrace the cutting edge. Our solutions are containerised, operating system agnostic (based on Java), automated using Ansible and use the latest industry best DevOps practices.

Auditing and the Corporate Record

All data manipulation is indelible and audited. All designated business data objects are versioned and historised and can show exactly what data has changed and what it was at any given time in the past. All changes to data through the application are audited, whether through the user interfaces or APIs.