High-Level View:
“Built for today's entrepreneur and small business interests to build, grow, and sustain a full scale web presence, this revolutionary new system leverages the ease and simplicity of WordPress using it as an administrative front end for a much deeper and richer system.
“Did we lose you at WordPress? Wait a sec... Working with Octopi behind the scenes of WordPress, the world's foremost blogging engine just got teeth- or tentacles to be precise. The App offers significant business administration tools, custom workflows, and marketing automation tools (including SEO) for Solo-preneurs, Micro-producers and Small Agencies to achieve peak productivity and monetize their business much more easily and effectively.
“Comparable systems typically require significant overhead to maintain and at least a small IT department to manage. However, the Octopi stands apart from anything ordinary in that it targets (and achieves) 1% - 2% administrative overhead in terms of actual time and money spent, while providing a stable growth platform for your infrastructure.
It features fully developed tools for information publishing and super convenient, yet secure content delivery to your customers, clients and your subscriber base.
The bottom line speaks volumes as this scaled down version of an Enterprise Class System scales its price down as well to make it affordable for the average Small Business, not only those with funding.
(That's the high-level overview... if you wish to read on please note it's time to suit up and boot up because some wild mashups and plenty of op-ed verbiage is about to scroll your way)
Who is this article written for?
This article references conceptual principles and certain technical aspects of the Octopi Integrated Data Engine aimed at Developers, Data Scientists and Architects, as well as any business leader who thrives on applied science, and particularly software as applied to business administration.
Please note that the intent of this article is to highlight philosophy significant in the creation of this technology and construct a context for this- asserted as a much needed point-of-departure from current fads in software development.
What is it?
The Octopi is software written as a Plugin (App) for the world's most popular CMS, WordPress. It is available exclusively via private commercial license, which means you won't find it listed on WordPress.org as a plugin.
It is actively developed and stable at version 1.4.5 (Octopus Balboai) by the Author, Max Bellasys. Development started in May, 2011 and its first stable version was released in January, 2012.
The Octopi began as a collection of administrative interfaces providing a Data Abstraction Layer as the foundation of an Enterprise Information System (Integrated System) to be constructed within the WordPress CMS framework.
Here the focus is almost exclusively integrating the common real-world components of revenue generating business systems, i.e. supporting the functional aspects of a business and marketing model when combined with web publishing, customer relations, and even brick-and-mortar or other tangible business features.
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"The Octopi provides a stable platform for customization
and further development of business-specific applications
in the same way that an IDE or an iPAAS facilitates the construction of common and extensible structures."
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From this very difficult position- that is, attempting to create an integrated system from the standpoint of a modular plugin- several greatly enhanced features were implemented. Using these enhancements, the real purpose for the Octopi was achieved in that intelligent interactions between discrete (and previously disconnected) business critical system components were achieved.***
Among these advances at least 3 significant maxims were established:
• Decoupled Content is now practicable within the WP environment.
• Enterprise Class Data Applications can now be written leveraging WP as a common interface.
• A Single Data Architecture facilitates interactions between Heirarchic, Parallel, and Autonomous and/or Disconnected Data nodes.
*** Common "business critical" components in the modern sense, what we call the minimums, are integrated Membership, Subscriber and Secure Login Identity modules; Membership Management tools as CRM; Secure Content Delivery including Mobile and HTML5 customizable media such as mp3 audio and mp4 video; 3-tier custom security algorithm via MiCASA™ Identity Software; Sales and Marketing Mail Automation with proper utilization of Transactional mail; Payment system integration; Appointment and Scheduling system integration; Page, Post and Resource indexing for organized business infrastructure and collaborative workflow; Automated SEO and support for advanced SEO, SEM and SMO; specialized resources supporting Online Education- courses, classes, and syllabi, and overall LMS functions.
Why is this important?
There are a few great articles about the power and purpose of Decoupled Content, and one in particular speaking to the point of "Why WordPress needs to get Decoupled" , but unless you're a systems architect, or interested in deep systems theory, the true benefit of Integrated Systems Architecture and the way Octopi handles it might be elusive.
Our point is to provide a common platform so that content (what we think of as data objects) can benefit from coupled, decoupled or loosely coupled styles of handling as appropriate.
The result is a hybrid app that facilitates responsiveness in the marketplace, and brings big-data tools within reach as affordable at-scale solutions to the average small business interest.
A brief contextual history
It seems like everything today is an app. It's as if Integrated Systems never existed (kudos if you're not Googling Integrated Systems as you read this...) yet this trend where the App reigns supreme is more of a political assassination than anything else.
The problem with Integrated Systems- thought of today as "monolithic beasts" reminiscent of IBM in it's heyday, or King George or something- was not their daily operations. These systems were admired for their dependability; rock-solid and robust ops were their strength; yet their inherent difficulty to pace industry changes since the advent of the internet may have catalyzed their doom.
Witness bloated, severely gross to maintain, and slow-to-change monolithic beasts having survived far too long because they had the support of the best minds of the industry- especially since these same minds created them and the architectures they depended on. Note with irony that the ADHD fueled App craze is also built on the merit of the leading tech figures since 1980...
The destruction of the Integrated System in corporate America finally came about after the erosion of the foundations that built them- or perhaps most technically the erosion of the relevance of the foundations which built them.
Whether it can be directly asserted or not, the "App" in modern terms is the crowning achievement of the modular systems paradigm, as such the App is like the hand of Brutus dispatching Caesar.
Whether it was the one and only death-blow, it was certainly the most poignant.
What's the agenda here?
There is a more compelling problem to confront than the discussion between merits of Integrated vs. Modular systems when it is realized that in spite of numerous products being released as a result of new architectures, and new affordable systems including open-source solutions, yet it remains quite true that micro-business interests have never really had many champions in the grand scheme of things.
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"...getting a plugin to handle [systems integration
in WordPress] is like rigging a three-masted sailing vessel
for single-hand sailing."
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It's all here in 2014- economies of scale, market hyper-fragmentation, carpet-bagger mentality grown and home-grown to epic proportions while b2b, apps, and the new cult of online marketing sells it a chip at a time...
The analogy of the California Gold Rush of 1849 can be established as the perfect fit to represent this entire phenomenon called IT at least from 1999 - present.
These days isn't picks, pans, and shovels being loaded onto a mule for $50-100 a crack. Now it's the "premium plugin" or the many incarnations of the same DIY dream kit (all for just $49.95!), leading to the next stage at $300, leading to the next for just $997, and the next, and the next; finally topping out at $10,000 to hold audience with the king of the tidy-whities himself (not that we'll mention the golden child by name, BB)...
While the marketing hype is easy to point out, it's not exactly unethical or illegal based on strictly literal values. The problem is that the proportion of the ethic is wrong.
Just because it can be done doesn't really mean it should be done. It is a complete truism that people can only tolerate new information in small, bite sized chunks, and just because there's a good fit and an element of economic certainty expressed in our fragmented society which actually aligns with the sales and mass marketing technique of selling bite-sized chunks of actual, real, productive information systems, it doesn't mean that it serves any ethic to repeat business models pushing free websites, DIY web, and broad-spectrum marketing to people that have $50-$200 to spend on a startup. In fact, it's wrong and in our estimation it's criminal, if not simply annoying that so many business models are following this trend.
Marketing products which sell marketing is the biggest pyramid scheme ever realized, and... well... we admit it's hard to completely criticize this because it's human nature to enjoy a good circus; and we understand that someone absolutely, positively just had to do it once.
Offended much?
These statements are not intended to be derisive. The real problem here is one that ultimately threatens the financial health of the industry we work in: the business industry in a globalized market.
Our viewpoint identifies the problem as the massive disconnect between what business owners need i.e. affordable business systems at scale and what is being produced by typical applications developers and many companies whose decision it is to employ and direct such applications to be constructed and brought to market.
The disparity between the actual products available and the actual needs of the small business owner, professional class business owner, and today's entrepreneur means that this sector is not only underserved, it's marginalized by the entire focus of the industry.
An App by any other name...
The "Plugin" market, or essentially the market for Apps which extend Software, is a thriving paradigm- particularly as experienced in the WordPress platform- and this serves developers and peer-groups of developers much more than business owners who frequently end up with a horrid overall user experiences and frequently manual ports of data in the software flow (waiting for business/client interactions to complete what could be automated) while believing that their chosen "solution" makes sense. All this really means is that the average business owner doesn't know any better; but in our industry we do.
The lack of reasonable systems just to deliver a simple digital product securely to a purchaser is noteworthy. Yes it can be done, but the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing and UX seems like OX, thinking of the 4 legged variety.
Systems performing follow-up sales and reasonably smooth interactions (as a distant cousin to intelligent interactions) are either expensive to maintain at scale, or these do not play well with others, or both.
Thanks to Economies of Scale Apps and other modular systems have created enough entropy to cause a near-implosion in the software market considering jobs and wages- and this is a market that apps and modular systems actually created just 10 years ago.
Notice the same effect was felt in the real-estate market as a direct result of globalization, but nobody really paints that picture. When hundreds of thousands of tech jobs suddenly disappear in 2016, and the average tech wages make you think you should have gone into medicine, you heard it here first.
The net effect?
When fundamental philosophies of business administration supported by Integrated Systems meet the agility and responsiveness of Modular Systems a new paradigm is possible to be expressed.
Let's call it an "And World" where a small business can achieve the same integrated feel (UX and admin interfaces) using an Enterprise Class Data System, and yet they can have this with few maintenance costs, they can have it without the vendor lock-in associated with proprietary systems, and they can have it at 1/6th the cost of an entry level Integrated system where advertising, sales, marketing, content delivery, web publishing, SEO and CRM can be managed with a target systems administration overhead of just 1% - 2%.
Replace your LMS. Replace all but the most critical business services, and centralize middleware, or eliminate middleware unless it actually integrates services, or extends and interfaces with new markets. Create custom workflows without compromising the user experience. Create intelligent interactions with clients, and understand what is really driving the business. Treat people as people, and check your entire system scope to see that it makes sense from the position of the user experience, not just your budget.
Rather than limiting this scope to successful small businesses, port these benefits to the environment experienced by Solo-preneurs or Entrepreneurs who may employ just 1 assistant (usually someone in a technical capacity).
By the way, getting a plugin to handle this scenario is like rigging a three-masted sailing vessel for single-hand sailing.
Integrated Development Environment for WordPress:
• Data Collections inclusive of disparate Data Sources composited in a unified data abstraction layer
• Data treated fundamentally as Data, decoupled from system normals
• HyperNS™ implementation of NameSpaces with enhanced functional context for data objects
• MiCASA™ Identity Software embedded
• 3-Tier Security Algorithm providing ultra-secure password-less logins and hacker-proof protocols
• Suited for multi-scale Architectures from Solo-preneurship through Small Government Infrastructures
• Custom workflows currently support 5 industries: Education, Real Estate, Professional Services, News Agencies, Generic Information Systems and Web Publishing
• Current system limits 40x IPv6 static data nodes managed in a single implementation via Evented Architectures
Cross-site Content Syndication/Networking/Sharing:
• Syndication of content and/or resources via standard web interfaces
• Networking on the fly for subscriber-bases across discrete domains (rather than WP Multisite)
• Granular controls for permissions and privileges across discrete domains
• Syndication and sharing without SEO penalties for duplicate content
Systems Integration for Modern Entrepreneurs and Small Business supporting Integrated Business and Marketing Models:
• Integration of business components such as Marketing Mail, Payment Systems, and Member Accounts
• Secure Content Delivery, Digital Product Delivery, and Subscriber Permissions
• SEO Automation plus enhanced workflows when tasking Advanced SEO and Video Marketing
• Automation of Advertising/Sales/Marketing
• Simplified customer service directives
• Cross-browser HTML5 Audio/Video with custom niche interfaces, playlists, and Flash Fallback.
• "Lead Magnet" style system component built to replace Lead Pages
• Calendar/Scheduling system component built to replace Appointment+
• Membership system component built to replace Amember/Wishlist Member
• Overall system built to replace InfusionSoft's top-tier service level
• Integrated Transactional Mail component to achieve 100% Inbox delivery with new registrants/members.
• Integrated Marketing Mail component
• Membership Console providing central access to all products, events, and related info
Login and System-wide Security
• Login system component via MiCASA Web ID utilizing 3-tier security for usable mashup of user configurable strength and global site options
• Password-less Login system and and super-simple security settings (on/off switches) super-convenient for users and the overall UX
• 3-tier security defeats account lockout, account-piggyback, and allows user-settable Master Machine status
• Secure backend provides "hacker-proof" content delivery and denies discovery of content URL's without resorting to obfuscation
• Security best-practices allow robots & indexing of "payload" pages by securing just the digital content streams, not the page containing the content
• handle non-privileged users experience by allowing exposed content while protecting payload data.
System Performance and Scalability
• Performance tuned, refactored and tweaked for 1 second page-loads on average with modest VPS system*
• Distributed Web Server/Database means system scales with flexible focus
• Functional programming style adopted to negotiate the dubiously OO style of the WP base system...
In conclusion
Successful Apps- as well as successful Integrated Systems- historically have found new ways to bridge the gaps between people and the way they choose to relate, independent of what happens when they do relate; successful systems have created communities, established social change, re-calibrated entire societies, and disrupted entire markets...
