GESS have just completed the design, development and deployment of an Engineering Business portal which was also integrated into the Microsoft Great Plains Financial System.  The development was done for a leading civil engineering consultant in South Africa.

The system was web based and developed using a combination of COM+, ASP and Dot.NET technology.  The data tier was deployed on Microsoft SQL 2000.  The total solution included the design and deployment of a LAN and WAN infrastructure across the whole of South Africa.  This design included the design and installation of primary domain controllers, the design and implementation of an Active Directory structure on Windows 2000, the deployment of Windows 2000 across the network as well as the networking hardware, firewalls, routers, diginet connectivity (line procurement and management), security solutions, an anti-virus solution, a distributed e-mail solution, NAS units (Network Attached Storage units) and data backup and security solutions.  The network included offices in the 5 major business centres in South Africa, and also catered for 9 smaller “satellite” offices utilising dial-up connections to the WAN.

The goal of the solution was to have one centralised database driven information system integrated to a single financial system.  The client’s main focus of business is consulting engineering services.