User Guide

Understanding the Benefits of the Sage Accpac ERP Architecture
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Sage Accpac ERP
Technology
Design Flexibility and the Hosting Paradigm
The Sage Accpac ERP architecture is designed for flexible, scalable, and cost-effective deployment in
a Hosted environment. A key cost factor in the hosting scenario is how many independent companies
can be run on one server and managed easily from a central point. The Sage Accpac architecture has
a unique combination of design features as illustrated in the following table and product screens:
Sage Accpac
Design Features
Sage Accpac
Hosting Advantage
Site directories separate unrelated companies
running on the same server. Each company
identifies its own security and access rights for
groups of users.
A single server can be used whether there are 50
users in one company or 50 companies with ten
users each. Sharing a single machine does not
mean having a single security methodology.
Multiple versions of the product can be
installed on the same machine. Installation on
a machine does not activate the version for all
companies at once. Users or consultants can
activate a version one company at a time.
As the software moves from one version to the
next, conversions on a single server machine
can be phased as convenient. Companies may
therefore control the timing of a conversion process.
The language is identified for individual users
of a company. Sage Accpac currently supplies
product translations for simplified Chinese,
traditional Chinese, French, and Spanish.
A single server machine can be used for companies
in different countries or to run a company that has
multiple user language requirements on the same
machine.
Multiple Companies and Security Systems on a Single Machine. In an Online Hosted
environment, multiple companies may be set up on a single machine (or server), each with its own
security systems. If business management software does not support this, then each client must be
set up on a separate server. This is not a true hosting model, but rather a managed services model.
The problem with this approach is that it limits fail-over and load balancing flexibility, which are key
high-availability factors. In a high-availability hosting environment, large, redundant network storage
devices are used to balance loads so that multiple servers are available to process data for multiple
companies. Multiple security systems on a single data store is a requirement for this setup. Figure 7
shows the Sage Accpac User Authorization administration service and the users and the applications
they can access.
Figure 7—Sage Accpac security is well suited to the hosting paradigm, as it allows security to be defined by
company and user on the same physical machine.