As we worked closely with partners and customers over the past 18 years, we’ve learned that scalability is a key requirement, albeit a silent one, most of the time taken for granted. Yet from the technical perspective, scalability is one of the most difficult achievable traits a system can have. In this article we look at how YSoft SAFEQ’s architecture is designed to handle scalability easily and cost efficiently.
Building block architecture
YSoft SAFEQ takes a tiered approach to architecture where each tier and the services that reside on each tier are individual building blocks.
Like building blocks, the tiers and services can be used to design a solution for a customer’s existing infrastructure meeting their technical needs while allowing for growth at any level. It is YSoft SAFEQ’s tiers and the concept of building blocks that are at the root of YSoft SAFEQ’s ability to scale.
Single site – vertical scalability
YSoft SAFEQ architecture offers a variety of services that, like building block tiers, can be quickly and easily added as needed. For example, an organization may have a single site and require simple print, scan and copy services for a few hundred employees.
As the company grows, perhaps now at 1000 employees, it needs to add more devices and additional services such as mobile print and Automated Scan Workflows. YSoft SAFEQ architecture enables an organization to adapt quickly to these changing needs and can add the services and infrastructure required to support additional users or MFDs (multi-functional devices).
Multi-site – horizontal scalability
With further growth, the company may open a new office or acquire another company. The original site becomes the headquarters with a remote location or multiple remote offices. To support this growth, YSoft SAFEQ’s architecture can add building block tiers to the company’s infrastructure, as shown in the diagram below. The new remote office only requires one YSoft SAFEQ tier and a set of services and uses the centralized HQ architecture for the rest.
Multi-site – horizontal scalability with different requirements
Not all remote locations have the same IT requirements. For example, an organization may have headquarters, regional offices, and district offices. The district offices may simply be satellite offices with few employees where no paper output is needed, and scan documents are routed directly to headquarters. Some remote offices may have mission-critical printing and, therefore, high availability is required, while other offices don’t need it. While other solutions only allow high availability, redundancies and failover as an all-or-nothing approach, YSoft SAFEQ can accommodate these needs in place for locations that truly need it by clustering tiers. This is illustrated in the diagram below.
A Platform for Growth
YSoft SAFEQ is designed as a Platform for Growth. Its building block architecture gives an organization the scalability and flexibility it needs while delivering reliability and uptime.
To learn more about YSoft SAFEQ architecture, building block tiers and services, security and communications, contact your Y Soft representative for a copy of the
YSoft SAFEQ 6 Architecture Overview white paper or
download it here (requires a free subscription to the Y Soft newsletter.)