A Short History Lesson

Did you know that the Mlink Data Communications system is 30 years old in 2013! Yup, Mlink has been transferring files and other data since 1983.

What else was going on then?

• Ronald Regan was the U.S. President.
  
• Motorola introduced the first mobile phones
  
• Sally Ride became the first American woman in space.
• ARPANET began using Internet Protocol, thus inventing the Internet
• Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Word were released
• IBM released the PC XT
• Starwars Episode VI and Flashdance were hits at the box office
• Michael Jackson and David Bowie were filling arenas

Many of the products, movies and political figures of the time
were household names. Arguably, Mlink should be as famous. It
came out at the same time and is still in use by a surprising
number of small and very large corporations for all of their
enterprise data transport requirements. And when it comes down
down to sheer "Gotta have it to survive", I think our slogan
says it all, "Because Information Is Business Critical"
Mlink has easily been as important to the business community
as MS Word, if not more so.

One of the absolutely brilliant features of Mlink that has
enhanced it's longevity is it's own proprietary script
programming language. This facilitated the creation of server
based automated polling systems. The first was called the
Polling Manager. PM seems somewhat crude by today's standards,
but it was cutting edge when it was released. In fact, just
a few weeks ago I worked with a very recognizable restaurant
chain who is still using it! The second server polling system
was ACM. The Advanced Communications Manager. ACM was heads
above PM and is currently used by retail and restaurant chains
as well as franchisors that I guarantee you'd all recognize by
name.

Mlink can't last forever, but I think I'll be gone before it's
gone. The writing is on the wall nonetheless. Mlink is no
longer being ported to new OS versions which means it will
eventually stop running on currently supported platforms. But
until then, Happy Birthday Mlink!

We're back!

Hi! We haven't blogged for quite a while, but we have an excuse. We've been hard at work producing the Data Resource Manager. DRM is a state-of-the-art data transport and polling system.

"Why would you build DRM when there are already polling systems out there?".

Pretty simple, really. Changing technology, new government and private mandates, new security threats and the constantly evolving business environment demand that software systems change as well. We didn't see that happening in the industry so we did something about it.

DRM is the product of marathon design sessions, cutting edge development environments and best practices coding methodology. It's scalable, extendible, intuitive and easy to maintain. It allows your staff to have the ability to do their jobs without permitting access to functionality they don't need. It gives management the ability to monitor staff activity and thus affords training opportunities when mistakes are made. And speaking of end user errors, DRM is designed to limit the ability for employees to enter the wrong stuff. Choices are selected from drop-down menus and text fields are checked for length, unpermitted characters and proper content.

There are a number of reasons why these features are important to you.

As our motto says, "Information is Business Critical." These days you can't run your business without the information generated every day. Broken, problematic software means no data or incomplete data. Reliability in a data transport system is job number one.

Insecure data communications is an open door to hackers. This is well known. Legacy systems transmit plain text files, clear text IDs and passwords. A hack just waiting to happen. But an insecure system at headquarters can also be a time bomb. Insider data breaches account for about 35% of all breaches. And hacked data costs money. A lot of money. In 2011 the average cost of a data breach per organization was $5.5 million. Securing communications is a no-brainer. It is also interesting to note that 39% of those insider breaches were due to negligence! Is your data transport system an open book? Or does it implement role based access as DRM does? An employee who only runs reports doesn't need to have the ability to change login credentials. Fine-tuning employee access is peace of mind.

Many software developers ignore database security, focusing on the application itself. But the data, the stuff that hackers value, is in the database. The DRM database and application are designed to deny rogue access, SQL Injection attacks, etc. We monitor current events in the hacker world and review published breaches to ensure that our software is as robust as it can be.

We'll be blogging more about DRM because we're very excited about it. It's good software! And we'll also be talking about data security, good software design and maybe even the endless snow in New Hampshire.

Stay tuned!