G-CLOUD - OCTANE DATA INTEGRATION AND REPORTING FOR TRANSPORT

Built for the Transport Community

IB Boost's innovative Community Cloud operational model allows distinct organisations in the UK public sector with common interests to use and contribute to a flexible data management platform that is not constrained by typical integration, whilst remaining secure and agile in how the system can be configured and the data used.

By developing an OCTANE instance with Transport-specific business concepts and data modelling, IBB brings a customisable platform that provides a common platform for both private and shared datasets without building costly integrations or repeating data entry. OCTANE has already been built to be compliant with common international open-standards and reference data sets, including:

• ISO defined datasets (countries, currencies, etc.)
• UN/LOCODEs (UNECE Location codes)
• European maritime reporting
• THETIS integration
• ECCAIRS/ADREP taxonomy compatibility
• Support for AIS data
• Vessel/aircraft registration management
• And many others...

The OCTANE platform can serve as:

• a performance management reporting tool
• a case-management platform
• a system of record for inter-organisation data
• a common integration/transport platform for cross-organisation information
• a questionnaire and scoring tool
• a document management hub
• a cross-organisation centralised workflow hub

Further details on how pricing for the Community Cloud instances operate are included in the G-Cloud service's pricing document, based on certain minimum uptakes.

Note that one organisation must be the designated Lead Organisation that will have ultimate authority from a buyer perspective on functional usage of the platform and organisations must bilaterally establish agreements with that Lead Organisation regarding data access and storage and expected usage of the instance.

Data Management and Reporting Capabilities

OCTANE was built from the ground-up over the past decade based on leading open source tools and frameworks with some added IB Boost magic to create a unified platform that meets the needs of modern, data-centric organisations.

OCTANE is an extensible one-stop-shop for data management and business intelligence with built-in modularity and extension points so that all customised business data needs can be met in a single application platform. The approach of providing a platform with all the tools needed to manage data of any size, whilst building in the flexibility to work with any custom business data processes, provides a unique value-for-money proposition.

OCTANE allows both utilisation of built-in analytics and dashboarding capabilities and exposing APIs to work with your existing processes and systems, making it flexible for any framework.

The extensive data integration tools, customised workflows and productivity-based tools in apps (including task management, alerts, and bespoke dynamic reporting) means every organisational need for data management can be met.

Data Integration and Analytics Offering

This cloud software offering comprises the following aspects:

1. OCTANE 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, and includes products like OCTANE Integration and ORQA to meet the most complex data integration needs
2. Infrastructure cost management: either IB Boost or third-party managed software-as-a-service (SaaS) operating models, utilisation of client's existing cloud services accounts or integration with hybrid or private cloud infrastructure are possible depending upon client requirements
3. Configuration and customisation services: initial setup of OCTANE, development of ORQA automation tasks, and integration into your organisation's network

Figure 1 - Rich dashboards can be created by users for dynamic displays or printing

Figure 2 - Build complex PivotTable-like analytics on the fly from your own data model

Fully-Managed, Cloud-Native and Available

IB Boost's OCTANE platform offers cloud-deployed hosted data integration and management services that provide an 'always on' data capture, transformation and publication service. It is capable of handling massive volumes, complex event processing, and diverse data sources - all while complying to stringent delivery timelines.

All OCTANE deployment types are available as cloud-native, fully-managed services allowing clients to rapidly deploy complex systems through our implementation and configuration services at a fraction of the cost of traditional bespoke software development.

We offer support levels of any requirement and bring with us a self-contained, full development and operational stack for all project sizes and complexity including being able to deploy and manage:

• Source control
• Continuous Integration and Delivery systems
• Quality Assurance and Code Quality checking
• Automated testing frameworks
• Security testing tooling
• Issue and task management system
• Wiki
• Log centralisation, querying and analysis
• Real-time protective security monitoring systems
• Customisable resource utilisation alerting systems

Web-Based, Modern, Flexible and Powerful

OCTANE can easily handle the connection to any type of endpoint, the processing of hundreds of thousands of messages per day, complex routing, transformation and enrichment, and error handling for data integration purposes. GUI automation and API interfacing allows you to extract data from or put data into almost any source or destination.

Extensive investment in powerful search and grid capabilities allow any user to interact with the data in an intuitive yet powerful manner.

Figure 3 - Powerful, dynamic and intuitive search capabilities

Data Integration

OCTANE builds upon these powerful data integration capabilities by providing a way to quickly and easily build data repositories, reporting systems and task productivity systems of any nature. This includes customisations of the formats and delivery of your outputs to minimise the time spent in analysis and execution in a collaborative platform.

Tools both built into the web platform and available for the customisation of endpoints permit the extraction and transformation for easy management of data across formats.

Figure 4 - Example of in-application inspection and analysis of XML messages

Reconciliations can be done using templates, allowing non-technical users to build reconciliations in seconds, and features such as mismatch tolerances, format constraints and file header and delimiting formats means that reconciliations can be personalised to suit even the most stringent requirements.

Extracts and Reports

As well as native Business Intelligence capabilities and the ability to export dashboards and analytics, table-based queries and results are available natively.

Searches and reports can be shared amongst users and groups, and reports can be reviewed, edited and tracked throughout the system. Real-time updates from a single-source-of-truth and a powerful task and alert workflow means that data quality issues can be immediately addressed.

Figure 5 - Configure extracts based on dynamic queries and rich formatting and deliver to users using intuitive configuration

A modern, simplified and interactive approach to reporting and analysis empowers users to access, discover and blend data of all types and sizes. Advanced analytics - from basic reports to predictive modelling - will allow users to analyse and visualise data across multiple dimensions, and reports can be shared and managed with a customised audience.

Distributed Execution and Self-Created 'Bots'

OCTANE allows ORQA robotic automation users to craft their own process automation tasks on their local desktop for testing and process automation and to upload these tasks into the cloud platform, allowing remote execution on the cloud and delivery of any produced outputs as required according to schedules or triggering events.

This permits unparalleled automation and data ingestion capabilities from various sources, such as the ability to scrape websites, automate legacy desktop applications and consume APIs, all managed through a single web application portal.

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).

Intelligent Automation and Artificial Intelligence

OCTANE has Intelligent Automation capabilities by integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) modules, including Machine Learning (ML) with technical automation features, also known as Cognitive Automation.

This allows OCTANE to provide an unrivalled set of features in deriving information of value from a centralised data hub through limitless ORQA integration points, whilst still maintaining enterprise-grade data security and customised, efficient user interfaces.

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.

Built-in 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.