| The Ultimate Business Machine Technology, business And, not least, about by: Bernard Teo
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The Ultimate Business Machine - ArchivesList of Categories : Database * Technology * Commentary * Singapore * Travel * Sun 30 Apr 2006 One Year On, We've Got 5000 UsersCategory : Commentary/5000users.txt It's one year ago that OS X Tiger was launched and we made Postfix Enabler into a revenue stream (is there any other way to say it?). We've now got 5015 paying customers, since we started keeping proper records, and that's over 5000 unique customers, some of whom have bought all four of our software - Postfix Enabler, WebMon, DNS Enabler, as well as upgraded to MailServe. And we've done five applications, including Luca which is going thru a total revamp right now, and should be re-released in a couple of weeks. I've been working with Hai Hwee to clean up the Luca code - to make it smaller, faster, and yet more stable. We've been using this test database with 88,000 vouchers - it's about the size of a medium-sized company's accounting database over three or four years - and it's now running quite fast even on a slow SQLite database (it's about three times faster running on a MySQL database). A Trial Balance can be done in under 10 seconds, and a hierachically-organised analysis of the accounts, like that shown below, can be generated in under 15 seconds :
What this means is that if you're using Luca with the bundled SQLite database (on an Intel Core Duo iMac or MacBook Pro), it will serve you quite comfortably over three years, after which time there would probably be faster machines you can use, or you can switch over to a MySQL database. And Luca will keep your accounts balanced, to the last cent, throughout all that. That's what I wanted to get Luca to - a version stable enough to handle a very large load right from the start. The current release is still quite crashable, so I'm looking forward to releasing this new version. We've got the server applications - WebMon and MailServe. And we've got the back-end accounting database. What I am trying to work towards is to build the pieces that will link the two ends, so that a Mac user could really run a business on the 'Net, end to end. It's because we have a back-end system (that the on-line sales transactions funnel automatically to) that I can see how we're doing over the months - how the sales of DNS Enabler and WebMon have grown relative to Postfix Enabler - so that we're not too dependent on just one line - and how likely people are going to upgrade to MailServe. What I'm trying to do is to make these data analysis tools available to other Mac users, too. We've been building all these things for other people for so long, that it feels great this time round that the cash register rings for us, instead. I suspect sometimes that our users, who were working for their organisations and drawing a regular salary, didn't really appreciate what magic --- being able to "make money" through an on-line sale with no material goods being produced or consumed --- was being wrought on their behalf ... because there is magic, and lots of hard work, too. And we've got lots of 4D code - payroll, real estate, construction project management, training administration, and general insurance - some of which (like payroll, most definitely) we're thinking of bringing over to Cocoa. The Mac's a great business tool. And I think we've got the applications to prove it. |
Mac@Work
Services running on this server, a Mac Mini running Mac OS X 10.9.2 Mavericks:
all set up using MailServe, WebMon, DNS Enabler, DNS Agent, VPN Enabler, Liya and our SQL installers, all on Mavericks. |
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