How SciCord ELN/LIMS Works
The SciCord Solution feature set is designed to quickly propel your organization into the digital age. It delivers on this promise using a secure architecture and a versatile Software-as-a-Service model.
Software as a Service
- SaaS minimizes your total cost of ownership
- Maintenance and backups are included minimizing IT overhead
- SciCord provisions required hardware, eliminating initial hardware purchase and refreshes
Security
- Award winning Azure cloud platform meets a broad set of international and industry-specific compliance standards, such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP, SOC 1 and SOC 2.
- Encryption at rest and in transit
- Replicated solution across two physical locations
- Backups to two physical locations, Incremental Daily, Full Weekly, Full Monthly
- Completed document bundles provided to customer for on-site storage
SciCord utilizes the Azure server network, making a SciCord Solution accessible around the globe.
Third Party Software Integration
- SciCord ELN/LIMS is designed to integrate into a customer’s environment.
- For applications such as LIMS, SAP, ESM, and Metrology, the integration method of choice is Web Services with bidirectional exchange of information.
- Other supported integration techniques include API, Database Access, and File Transfer.
Architecture
SciCord Client is deployed on an IIS web server and is downloaded and executed on the user’s desktop either inside a Browser supporting the Silverlight plugin, or out of the browser, using the Silverlight standalone client (OOB – out of browser). Data interactions occur between the SciCord Client application and SciCord Data Service that will read and write changes to the underlying database. The same happens for the BLOB interactions, where SciCord client reads and writes binary files calling a corresponding SciCord Web Service that, on its end, connects to the Azure BLOB infrastructure.
Additional applications or systems may interface to the system as well, consuming services exposed by SciCord WebApi or listening to the Events System.
Documents, experimental data, and templates are stored in the SQL Server database and in the Azure BLOB infrastructure. SciCord client can connect to the local PC serial port and can open TCP sockets to connect to “real-time” instruments line digital balances and scales.
SciCord Portal connects to the SQL Server database and the storage service, through the standard shared connection layer as well.
SciCord Bundler is a Windows Service that listens for incoming requests sent through specific Azure Blob Queue and, asynchronously, access the database though separated instances of the standard access layer library.
SciCord compared to the competition
In a head to head competition, SciCord is 3X more efficient at documenting a typical work process than the competition! One of our customers conducted an experiment in which SciCord was compared against another ELN/LIMS vendor. The concept was to understand which solution operated the most efficiently and effectively. A complete “Assay” work process was tested by the user group and while it took 60 minutes to complete the process using the [other vendor] tool, it only took the user 20 minutes using the SciCord solution.
Why does SciCord perform well?
| SciCord | Competition |
|---|---|
| Processes are integrated, all the work is done in one comprehensive interface. | Separate modules provided for each operation – time consuming to navigate to each stand alone function |
| Guides scientists through the work, providing efficiency tools wherever possible | Standardized data entry assumes a one size fits all, although it rarely does |
| Documentation is propagated as needed throughout a work process | Stand alone modules do not easily communicate information. Each module can require duplicate entries |
| Document only once and use links to reference | Stand alone modules can require duplicate entries |
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