Release Time for Bika LIMS 2.1 & Bika Calendar 1.0

Yes, we're finally there. It's release time.

We have released two new products early this week;
Bika LIMS 2.1 'Inkosi'; the latest and much improved version of our generic Laboratory Information Management System solution.
Bika Calendar 1.0; A stand-alone Plone product, that we use as an add-on to Bika LIMS to create a true working hours calendar.

Here links to Downloads and Project Pages;

• Bika LIMS Project Page
  
• Bika LIMS 2.1 Project Page & Download links
• Bika LIMS 2.2 Project Page - the next phase
• Bika Calendar Project Page & Download links
• Download page on Sourceforge.net (LIMS & Calendar)

You might also see us appear in various on-line media, as on the following project websites; Plone.org (LIMS, Calendar), Freshmeat.net (LIMS) and Sourceforge.net and of course on Bikalabs.com

Here also the official Press Release (which will be released early next week):

Web-based laboratory information management · Bika LIMS 2.1 Inkosi open source release
Bika LIMS 2.1 Inkosi 'The Chief' is the next major public release of the professionally supported open source LIMS by Cape Town company Bika Lab Systems and was released 26 May 2008 on a general public license, free to download, install and use.
Popular first release of Bika - pronounced bheeka and meaning 'to report' in isiZulu - has been downloaded more than 12 500 times world wide and established Bika as leading open source LIMS.
Feature rich LIMS 2 promises to become true Inkosi to the global Bika community of users and developers. It is now in production locally and being piloted in Canada, Nigeria and Costa Rica.
Also in May, Bika hosted a fellow from CICA with the aim of further customisation and implementations in pesticide residue laboratories in Latin America. The scientific exchange was sponsored by the IAEA. A Spanish translation is nearing completion

Automation
Bika Inkosi offers a host of functional enhancements, a well developed quality control suite and more automation to further improve turnaround times and eliminate human error
Regularly requested analysis sets, analysis profiles, can now be ordered with the minimum of clicks and in bulk through import files
In the lab itself, once-off worksheet template creation circumvents laborious manual work sheet management. The templates include place holders for control and duplicate samples and can be configured to closely resemble instrument trays
Upon using a template, Inkosi populates worksheets with analyses closest to their due dates but these can be manually adjusted to requirement, before exporting them to instruments and recovering results without having to manually enter any data
Results proceed through the standard Bika web based workflow - validated against client and product specific specifications, verification and publication in the client's preferred media: email, fax, digitally signed print, SMS and export file
The process is assisted by a system of alerts, prompting role players of pending tasks. A true time calendar, taking non working hours into account, makes for accurate alerts and efficiency reports. Results remain securely archived on-line, accessible via a powerful Google-like live search engine

Quality Control
Bika LIMS 1 is successfully used in ISO 17025 accredited labs and Inkosi builds on this heritage with granular audit trails of samples, analyses, analysis requests, worksheets, orders, invoices, and web content edits, ensuring total traceability. Analysis and work sheet re-testing work flows are incorporated and logged
Quality Control measures include the maintenance of standards, stocks and suppliers, the use of blanks and duplicate samples, instrument calibrations and graphical reporting on trends, distribution curves, relative % error and inter-laboratory proficiency schemes

CMS - Web portal content management
Bika remains one of the few web based LIMS not held back by web enabled legacy design, but developed in the cutting edge and robust web server technologies the Internet originated on. Inkosi LIMS front end can be built up to provide valuable services to clients and staff as well as marketing material to prospects and anonymous visitors
Knowledge centres and news letter tools are just two products that easily integrate with the LIMS and literally hundreds more exist, developed in the community supporting Plone, the open source CMS Inkosi is built on

POS - the professional open source model adopted by Bika
There is much media coverage about open source software models but these are often misunderstood and its potential underestimated. POS combines traditional OSS projects run by a community of software enthusiasts with a professional company, Bika Lab Systems in the case of Inkosi. The community adds strong support and world wide adoption of the software, while Bika Lab Systems backs the project with full-time engineering staff and formal contracts sponsored by fee-paying customers
Customers benefit from the increased quality of the software and design, and increased traction enabled by the product's community. Customers, partners, engineers, and open source communities are all self-motivated in ways that are beneficial to themselves and, as a side effect, to all

Future plans
Bika LIMS development is driven by client and community requirements, and if feedback from the current round of pilot projects bears fruit, complete instrument maintenance, batching, sample storage management and change request modules will be developed for release 4th quarter 2008. These will once more be best of breed designs discussed and improved in the Bika community forums. Ubuntu!

For more information please visit www.bikalabs.com. All enquiries welcome, info@bikalabs.com

SaaS and further news on LIMS 2.0 'Inkosi' Training Material

SaaS:

As you probably know, Bika Lab Systems, has been offering hosted Bika LIMS, Wine & Interlab solutions since its inception, initially we used to call it 'hosted LIMS', then changed it to 'ASP' (Application Service Provision) as it was called at the time, but since last year the term SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) seems to have become the new buzzword.

What does SaaS mean?

Wikipedia puts it rather well:
Software as a service (SaaS) is a software application delivery model where a software vendor develops a web-native software application and hosts and operates (either independently or through a third-party) the application for use by its customers over the Internet. Customers do not pay for owning the software itself but rather for using it. They use it through an API accessible over the Web and often written using Web Services or REST. The term SaaS has become the industry preferred term, generally replacing the earlier terms Application Service Provider (ASP) and On-Demand.' (link to original wikipedia article)

In simple terms, it means that our web-based LIMS, is hosted from our servers (currently only based in Cape Town, South Africa, but soon in a city near you), where we offer all support services, first line support to the clients' users, technical support on the system and hardware, relieving the client of any investment in IT know-how which normally would be associated with a LIMS acquisition. You pay a set-up fee, monthly rental and a per usage fee.

What SaaS solutions are we currently offering?

- Bika LIMS 1.2 (or Bika Wine, for the beverages industry)
- Bika LIMS 2.0 (still for evaluation and assessment purposes, until we release a production ready version)
- Bika Interlab 1.2
If you are interested, and would like to know more about our pricing, drop me an email

We do not only offer SaaS, but also use open source web-based solutions on our own server, many of which are available as SaaS on the Web. I use SugarCRM for my sales and marketing initiatives, Lemoene uses dotProject for as his project management tool and is currently evaluating Projity Openproj. We tried out Trac, but have reverted to Roundup as issue tracker for our commercial clients, and of course use our Plone website as a central CMS & document repository. As you can see we practice what we preach!

If you are interested further in sales and marketing related discussions about SaaS and its trends, I can highly recommend the following Blog; SaaStream

LIMS 2.0 'Inkosi' Related

Training Material:
Manual: We already started working on the new LIMS 2.0 manual, although still w.i.p. (which it will be until final release), you can find it here
Training Videos: We have started this week with writing up the various story boards and plan to start production (of the stable parts of the system next week), and will populate in our HelpCenter, a new LIMS 2 Video section.

Software:
Demo: The LIMS 2 demo is continually updated, current version is 2.0.18, and next week we are going to upgrade it with QC reports and graphs.
Alpha evaluation release: Although not officially released, if you're interested I can send you the latest Bika LIMS 2.0 and Bika Calendar 1.0 packages, if you want to test it locally on your own server. Send me an email if you're keen.