XPAC to lead dynamic software revival
Richard Roberts, 15 December 2011
THE first comprehensive makeover of a Runge software product post the largely unrealised Mining Dynamics vision will be unveiled next month as the company positions itself to capture a bigger share of the fast-growing mining software market in 2012 and beyond.
ASX-listed Runge’s CEO Dave Meldrum told HighGrade Mining IT the company’s new XPAC 7.12 mine scheduling software was its “most significant upgrade of that product in probably 10 years”.
“It’s a significant release for us,” he said.
XPAC 7.12 captured some of the spatial data management and discovery benefits promised by Mining Dynamics, in a domain software package, while also putting a long-awaited simplified, user-friendly top over the powerful XPAC engine.
“We’ve given it a much more modern look and feel; it’s much easier to navigate yourself around the system and most importantly I guess is our strategy going forward with our products is really to make them more accessible to more people in the industry,” Meldrum said.
“So the user interface is about making XPAC easier to use and therefore more accessible.
“The underlying XPAC engine is extremely robust – there’s been 30 years of evolution of that product. It’s probably the most solid in the market. But it’s the interface around it – some of the tools that sit around that engine that we’ve been doing the enhancements on.”
Meldrum acknowledged the new user interface would negate a key contention about complexity from non-XPAC users – and other software vendors – which could overshadow (or be used to overshadow!) the software’s ‘smarts’.
“Our business model has been very much built around domain knowledge; we have a lot of smart people in the engineering space, they have close relationships with our clients because they are working with them every day and that steers the development of our products,” Meldrum said. “Now by the nature of those relationships the products tend to get more complex. The people who are driving their evolution want more smart things done.
“So we end up with a highly sophisticated product that requires a high level of expertise to operate and a high level of client engagement to support.
“What we’re really looking at in this place now is … not dumbing products down – we keep the full functionality – but we make them so much easier to use.”
Runge, which took the unusual step of patenting aspects of Mining Dynamics before high-level sponsorship of the development program dried up after the industry emerged from the GFC, is now transferring elements of the program to its domain software suite. Meldrum joked that, a bit like a NASA space mission, a “lot of the technology we developed – that fell out of that [Mining Dynamics] program - you see now getting integrated back into our current products”.
“The way that we’re handling spatial data in XPAC going forward is a feature that we dragged through from Mining Dynamics and it’s going to significantly improve the accuracy of the work that comes through XPAC,” Meldrum said. “Also some of the work that we’re doing around the middleware space, the way our products are communicating with ERPs such as SAP, for example … a lot of what Mining Dynamics was about was rolling ERPs and domain software together and that technology we’re now finding useful. We’re not going into the enterprise space at all, but in communicating with the enterprise space that technology has been quite useful.”
XPAC 7.12 also sees the introduction of a fully functional data analysis and reporting tool so there is no need to export data to an external tool.
Runge is winding up Beta testing of the software and expects to formally launch at the end of January.
Also in the December 15 - 21, 2011 edition
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- Eritrea risk narrows Zara field
- ASIA DESK
- Not all good as gold in China
- AUSTMINE
- MST buys Nixon Communications
- BREAKING NEWS
- Abenab progress for Avonlea
- Alara advances
- Alcoa declares divi
- Alcyone search boost
- Better news for St Barb
- Black Fire complies
- Bu Dun Hua copper
- Chief sees higher rating for Endeavour
- Cockatoo extension
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- Industrea win
- Kingston shines
- Maiden Rosie resource
- More Bass trouble
- More concerns on uranium supply
- Nany option exercised
- Newcrest output up
- Palito reassessment
- Pegasus finds copper
- PGM output up
- Radar on track
- Redhill expands holding
- Rio in control
- River attraction for Silver Lake
- Southern Cross ready to move forward
- Stonehenge sets sights high
- Straits gain
- Strategic permit
- Tanoyan update for Reliance
- Trafford's exploration boost
- Two Rivers death
- Ventnor copper hits
- WA uranium policy
- West Rand mines to merge
- Windfall at lake
- Winmar attracts investor
- Yellowhead on track
- CENTRAL ASIA
- Can miners really side-step a war?
- COAL
- Mardon's new year wish
- CONSULTING
- Consultants see room to grow in 2012
- Lory leads SKM mining into new growth phase
- CONTRACTING
- Contracting briefs: Redpath, Thiess, Decmil
- FINANCE
- A golden path to Dubbo development
- Copper deficit a fixture for the future
- Kagara opts for safety first
- Money’s almost too tight to mention
- Terramin view expected to become clearer
- FORUM
- How the JORC and Valmin codes work
- More must buy into JORC discussion
- FROM THE CAPITAL
- Capital management will be key 2012 theme
- GOLD
- Loyal to the cause
- Upside seen despite Teranga downslide
- HEAVY METAL
- Atlas Copco expands mining range
- ISSUES
- State-run miners: best of a bad bunch
- MINING
- Independence gloom unwarranted
- MINING INTELLIGENCE
- 'tis the season (still) to be wary
- MINING IT
- Auto-money changes everything
- Innovation is the new black
- IT notebook: ARANZ Geo, Immersive Technologies
- IT notebook: Devex receives certification
- IT optimists
- Mining IT: 2011 rebooted
- Mining IT: product releases to fill 2012 calendar
- PEOPLE
- People on the move: Gindalbie Metals, Abcourt Mines, Carbon Energy
- SOUTH AMERICA
- Chili backers like its prospects
- VIEW FROM THE WEST END
- Bitten on the bum by a Black Swan
