"Our goal is to continue to provide a smart business solution, able to be externally and securely hosted anywhere in the world. We want our customers getting business value within hours of implementing." - Tony Crewdson CEO.

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i-lign is a standard web-based application written in Java. It has been designed for ease of installation, maintenance and use and does not need day-to-day maintenance nor specialized staff to support it. The application runs on a server and is accessed through a standard web browser, and has a gantt chart component that requires Java to be installed on the client PC. It needs a separate database server but is in every other way a self contained 'black box' and no other software needs to be installed. It is straightforward to install upgrades, and full instructions are always provided.

i-lign Application Server Components

The i-lign application server includes all the Java software it requires to run. There is no need to install Java separately on the server. The main components of the i-lign platform are:

Java Runtime Environment

A Java Runtime environment must reside on the same server that runs i-lign. Although there are many different JRE's available, i-lign has been thoroughly tested using the Sun JRE 5.0. The Sun JRE is included with the i-lign installation.

Tomcat Web Application Server

i-lign includes the Tomcat web application server as its Java middleware. Tomcat, an open-source web server from the Apache group, is the primary web server for Java applications, and was selected as the web application server for the following reasons:

• Configurability – Tomcat can be easily configured to meet the needs of its users. A custom configured version for i-lign is included with the installation.
• No license fees – As Tomcat is open-source, there are no license fees to be paid.
• Scalability – Tomcat can be scaled from a single server to a cluster of servers depending on the needs of the organisation.

System Requirements

The system requirements for servers are only applicable if you are hosting the i-lign server yourself. For externally hosted deployments only the client browser requirements apply.

Application Server Operating Systems

The i-lign application server can run on any of the following operating systems:

• Windows Server 2003
• Linux

Server Requirements

• Application server disk space: allow 500MB total
• RAM: at least 500MB per application instance, with room to expand as usage increases.
• CPU: 1GHz Minimum, 2+GHz Recommended

Database Server

i-lign requires access to one of the following SQL databases:

• Microsoft SQL Server 2000 or 2005
• Oracle 9i or 10g
• Firebird 2.0 (a Free / Open Source alternative)

i-lign does not include a license for the database software. Each organisation is responsible for the licenses required to run the selected database, and for the installation and maintenance of the database software.

Database space required: The size of the database depends more on usage patterns than on the number of users - for example extra space is required for more projects and more complex projects, for storing baselines and in particular for storing documents in the document library. Most i-lign databases are less than 500MB.

SMTP Server

If i-lign is configured to send email notifications then it will need to connect to a SMTP server that can deliver the notifications to users' mail boxes. No configuration is usually necessary. SMTP is a standard way of sending email that is supported by all mail servers like Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino or Novell GroupWise.

Client Requirements

i-lign is a web-based application and users only require a supported web browser to use it (see below). The gantt chart will also run in the browser but does need the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed on each user's PC. The JRE is a standard plugin that is freely available from Sun.

Supported Browsers

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 and 7
• Mozilla Firefox

Supported JAVA Runtime Environments (JRE)

either:

• Sun Java 5 (version 1.5.0_06 or later), or
• Sun Java 6 (version 1.6.0_02 or later).

Compatibility with Apple Systems

Safari on Mac OS X has been tested and is also known to work properly, although it is not yet an officially tested platform for new releases. To use the Gantt chart applet on a Mac you will need Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or later as this is the earliest release to support the required Java version. We do intend to officially support Safari in the future.