Architecture and Philosophy
At NCS Fulfillment, not only are we your service partner, we are your technology partner. We get technology. We're not out to create a "good enough" system to resell to the industry. We're out to create the perfect platform onto which you can build your publication's future.
Databases
From the beginning, NCS has used open relational databases to provide real-time, unified access to subscription data. Some competitors might lead you to believe this is somehow revolutionary and unique to them, but relational databases are grounded in decades-old research and has finally caught up with the fulfillment industry after years of batch-oriented, file-based systems with long update cycles. We're using proper referential integrity in a highly normalized database running on open platforms and commodity hardware. No respectable programmer worth their salt would be doing it any other way in today's technological climate.
From a practical standpoint, this means that all activity and history related to a person are linked together across all of your publications and other services.
Development
- In-house programming staff; we don't outsource our work overseas
- Extensible, custom in-house reporting framework
- Modern, dynamic languages for fast turnaround times
- Unit testing and peer reviewed coding
Infrastructure
- Servers are a mixture of HP, Sun, and Dell hardware running Debian GNU/Linux, OpenSolaris, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD operating systems
- PostgreSQL RDBMS
- Role-based access controls in place
- Redundant hardware and software deployments for high availability
- Warm-backup systems located 90 miles off-site of the main data center
Ongoing Research
- actively follow advancements in OCR/document management/scanning technology
- working directly with banking leaders on new Check21 check deposit advances
- heavy users of Open Source whenever it makes sense; We've also regularly given back to the community for over 15 years!
- Early adopters of AMQP (async messaging)