G-CLOUD - OCTANE INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION AND ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION

Robotic Process Automation Offering

This cloud software offering comprises the following aspects:

1. ORQA application and licences: for design, local execution and distributed bot processes of automation routines of any size and shape
2. OCTANE Web platform: a dedicated, isolated instance of the four-tier OCTANE web application, allowing control and execution of automation processes across a network and management of required infrastructure
3. Infrastructure cost management: utilisation of hybrid / private nodes are possible as well as utilising cloud services on existing accounts
4. Configuration and customisation services: initial setup of OCTANE, development of ORQA automation tasks, and integration into your organisation's network

Reusability and Scalability

ORQA is built with reusability in mind and brings with it many tools and optimisations to minimise repeat work. It offers a code-free development experience for many automation tasks, including the ability to record and playback automated processes from web applications, Windows and Java applications.

OCTANE, as the controlling framework, is built with scalability in mind, allowing a practically limitless number of bots to be deployed and managed depending on the scale of the project.

Configuration and Development

ORQA is fully user customisable and users can utilise either out-of-the-box automation operations, record their own processes, import scripts or develop their own more complex logic.

Such automation steps can be composed and abstracted as the user wishes, allowing a modular approach with full reuse capabilities for automation.

Configuration can be managed by various source control options, such as Git or Subversion, or by centralised publication of zips for non-admin, zero-install, zero-dependency usage. This permits organisations to begin work with ORQA quickly and efficiently.

Usability

A fundamental philosophy of ORQA is an intuitive visual structure to routines, and features can be dragged and dropped to be rearranged and managed in any way you like. Refactoring tools and keyboard shortcuts allow for quick manipulation of the structures so that users don't have to re-develop automations to optimise the structure.

ORQA uses a simplified building block approach for tasks, using intelligent type-inference behind the scenes to improve the development workflow and processing. The interface is user-friendly and includes built-in help, documents, tutorials, videos and learning courses.

Cost Efficiency

IB Boost bases all its solutions on best-of-breed open source technologies and as such is unencumbered by any licencing or undue costs beyond the cost of licencing our own IP. Nothing in the OCTANE suite obliges any third-party licences or proprietary software or use of any particular platform. As such, we truly believe we have the most cost-effective solution available.

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.