Product Description

Odyssey (Enterprise edition)
Stockman (SME edition)

Mid-Comp International's primary focus and competitive advantage has been the development of world class business software which takes full advantage of both current and emerging technologies. The current emphasis is on architectures and mechanisms which facilitate internet based business transactions, concentrating on those which can demonstrate a genuine application in the Supply Chain business community. Odyssey is the result of this endeavour, and is one of the world’s largest pure JAVA commercial systems.

Business technology is moving at a frenetic pace, and is being used to redefine competitive advantage. Companies willing to question conventional wisdom and embrace innovation are doing so not for the ‘geek’ factor of new technology, but to ensure that their IT applications armoury contains genuine commercial business advantage. Odyssey delivers a 21st Century strategic weapon for a fraction of the conventional cost and implementation time frame. It represents the emergence of a new paradigm in enterprise level application software. ERP Giant Killer (pdf)

Also identified was a need in the market for a product which could comfortably run an SME distribution company suffering growing pains with issues such as multiple sites, EDI trading, EANway scan / pack, and wireless warehousing. Mid-Comp has subsequently launched Stockman, a shrink-wrapped version of the Odyssey application tailored for the processing needs of small to medium companies supplying to the major retail chains. It is an ideal solution for distribution companies who have outgrown their current systems but cannot justify the costs and complexity leap to a corporate ERP. Stockman has a seamless migration path to the Odyssey enterprise solution suite, meaning the entry level investment is fully growth protected.

These products are genuine next generation 21st century developments, not just user interface variants of existing conventional application software architecture.

Innovation

The underlying technological architecture is radically advanced, employing in many instances what are still considered by major software vendors as theoretical concepts being investigated for adoption in future generations of their product developments. For example, Mid-Comp has successfully employed data object inheritance and introduced dynamic object adoption (business policies) into the application layer itself.

Odyssey & Stockman are both industry vertical agnostic, meaning they can legitimately support advanced supply chain commercial application requirements ‘out of the box’ for either simple or complex distribution and/or financial environments. This allows a very diverse company or corporation to operate all their divisions concurrently on a single instance of the software, tailored by ‘plug & play’ business policy objects down to product type / location / user level combinations. It totally removes the requirement to modify base application software, allowing new business streams to be introduced at will to an already fully operational system.

Both products are hardware, operating system, database, web server, and web browser agnostic, meaning they can be deployed without change onto any technology infrastructure platform. (e.g. Intel, AIX, iSeries, or even mainframe) This provides a significant advantage to a business undergoing rapid growth over a short period in order to service increased demand or business expansion. The software as originally deployed will still function even where the primary hardware infrastructure has been changed.

Being totally browser delivered, with correct security authority any function (not just selectively enabled components) can be accessed from anywhere there is an internet connection, hence delivering a genuine virtual office environment. This has major social implications whereby employees can continue to actively contribute even in situations where they are not able to attend the office due to domestic reasons, health, or travel issues … it makes absolutely no difference where you are physically located. With this concept in mind, the ability to dynamically expand operations regionally, nationally, or internationally … without additional infrastructure costs … becomes a totally painless commercial reality

Performance

Mid-Comp has independently created a comprehensive rapid application development tool set encompassing UML, Use Case, Entity Modelling, and GUI (WYSIWYG) functions through a common interface. The objective was to enable us to uniformly generate and maintain large volumes of base code and database entities, even for reverse engineering activities, with minimal development staff. It has proven to be a highly efficient, effective, and productive undertaking. The tool set framework also allows for the easy inclusion of emerging technologies (e.g. adapting of Ajax, Portlets, etc.) and regenerating the entire base objects set through a single process.

Odyssey Architecture (pdf)

The resultant code has passed highly credentialed independent technical & architectural scrutiny on several occasions, and we are confident that it complies with best practice for performance and structure.

Nintendo Australia went live company-wide onto the Odyssey platform as a beta partner site only 3 weeks before the launch of the Game Cube back in 2002, and has not looked back since. Migrating the entire company from the JDEdwards software suite to Odyssey, the return on initial investment coupled with a very minimal ongoing cost to maintain the software has been highly satisfactory. Nintendo tolerates nothing other than a zero inventory discrepancy rate, and although this may seem a bit far fetched, has continually maintained that status. Nintendo’s decision to migrate to what some regarded back then as a radical application technology platform has proven to have been the right one, time and time again, evidenced most recently by the overwhelming success of the Wii virtual reality gaming system launch in December 2006.

Potential

Mid-Comp has an established relationship with Multi Media Victoria, having participated in various domestic marketing activities aimed at promoting Victoria’s technology innovators. We participated in the delegation to India’s Bangalore IT in 2005, also representing the RFID Association of Australia at both Federal and State functions held in New Delhi during the same trip. Spotlight on Victoria (pdf)

Both Odyssey & Stockman are fully functional for international use.

• Language can be specified at individual User level, with any number of languages (including double byte formats) operating simultaneously. Screen language text sets are referenced as required, and these (language resource bundles) can be dynamically applied. A translation dictionary function also resides within the development tool set to minimise the translation effort.

• Time calculations are User location / time zone specific, based on the deviation from GMT. This is essential to provide meaningful time stamp information to the User where a centralised data centre operation is supporting multiple time zones nationally or internationally.

• Multi Currency supply chain and financial trading, management, and reporting is fully supported, even for 17 primary digit requirements of BAHT. Currency is controlled at financial company level, meaning that an unlimited number of financial companies can be operating simultaneously in different base currencies

• Multi Element Taxation of any construct or configuration is supported by a very sophisticated but easily maintained taxation rules engine, even catering for the complexities required to support the USA’s location based taxation rules for Federal / State / County / Municipal combinations

Mid-Comp has formulated a conservative reseller-driven sales and marketing plan to take full advantage of domestic and international successes, which will be executed as funding becomes available for expansion of the prerequisite support infrastructure. We foresee Stockman as being the easier option for the initial sales thrust concentrating on wholesale and retail distribution, supply chain, import /export verticals, substituting the full blown Odyssey ERP suite as the offering where a prospect emerges as being clearly beyond SME status.

To date Mid-Comp has not participated in Austrade or other Federal Government initiatives.

IBM (ANZ) 2001 Excellence in Technical Innovation Award

Telstra Broadband Grant 2003 – successfully demonstrated the viability and capability of providing commercial business applications via broadband to bush nursing hospitals in remote & rural Australia

Other information the judges should know

Founded in 1995, Mid-Comp International has consistently strived to remain at the forefront of research and development of emerging technologies, significantly aligned to those being advocated and supported by IBM’s own internal technical research groups, but also including an ongoing pure research collaboration with Monash University to a provide proof of concept of aspect computing theory as it applies to a commercial programming development.

Mid-Comp International Pty. Ltd. is a well-established reputable software development company with strong ties to IBM. The company has operated with capital injection limited to $1.2 million in total from 2 private investors since inception in 1995.

The Snapshot/TSC software product developed by Mid-Comp is sold in 26 countries. Mid-Comp is also a distributor in Australia for some overseas software products and this together with IBM hardware and software sales all contribute to profitability.

Nintendo Australia was not only instrumental to the development as a beta site for Odyssey but was also the first customer to go live with the entire suite of applications in April 2002. Odyssey played a key role in the launch of Nintendo's GameCube product in Australia, which was a huge success. The solution has since been sold locally to such high profile customers as Janome Sewing Machine Co. (Aust.) Pty Ltd, Findus Australia Pty Ltd, and BlueScope Steel Logistics, and most recently in December 2006 a very significant milestone was achieved with a sale to Elders Australia Ltd. Odyssey has also penetrated the US market with a sale in January 2004 to the Bosselman Corporation. (refer enclosed articles) 

In late 2004 the Odyssey software suite was donated to Kangan Batman TAFE for use as an education aide for diploma courses in warehouse logistics and business management. It continues to form a significant element of the curriculum for these subject areas. We would like to emphasise that this offer extends to all educational institutions throughout Australia, as it is regarded by Mid-Comp as our legacy for the advancement and continued competitiveness of Australia’s supply chain and general administration business practices.

Mid-Comp has also targeted for commercialisation: 

• Subscription version of Stockman. There has been genuine interest shown for collaborative ventures in various forms both locally and internationally. The establishment of infrastructure required to launch a subscription (SAAS / ASP) model, firstly on the Australian market and then internationally.

• Hospital subscription version of Odyssey Being orchestrated by Australian channel partner SIAG (Service Industry Advisory Group) the initial site would most likely be in the Republic of South Africa, and would be an expansion of a health services infrastructure project being sponsored by the European Union. Strong interest for Odyssey as a health industry supply chain solution has been generated, with local Australian health institutions requesting to be kept informed of progress.

• Fivestar printing solution Already developed and integrated into both Odyssey & Stockman, this solution suite has genuine commercial potential as an independent product. The target market is global, being all commercial enterprises and software development companies requiring SVG forms design and distributed printing via the internet capability.

• Tsunami JAVA developer’s toolbox Already developed, this is the Rapid Application Development (RAD) tools set that built Odyssey. It came about as a result of our frustration with the cumbersome and disjointed JAVA development tools available on the world market. The target market is again global, being all JAVA software development sites.

• Total Availability (TA) data failsafe and backup solution.
  Already developed and integrated into Odyssey, this product also has genuine commercial potential as an independent product. It provides a method of achieving High Availability (HA) or hot swapping the production environment for 24/7 electronic trading environments. It is unique in that it can hot swap between totally different machine types, operating systems, and databases, meaning a drastically lower cost in setting up a HA infrastructure. The target market is again global.

Attachments

Beyond JDE (pdf), Nintendo (pdf), IBM Partner World (pdf), ERP Giant Killer (pdf), 

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