Irish software company invests in the power of the cloud to enable businesses achieve complex calculations in ways Excel cannot.
Dublin software company TEKenable has invested €500,000 to develop a technology solution that converts Excel spreadsheet models into scalable enterprise systems.
Dubbed XL-a-Rate, the system supports forecasting, risk pricing and other model-based calculations at a scale that traditional Excel spreadsheets cannot.
“XL-a-Rate leverages the power of the cloud to run the most complex calculations in seconds”
Available both on-premise or as a cloud service through Microsoft Azure, the platform could be considered a useful spoke in the wheel of digital transformation of businesses.
Earlier this year TEKenable revealed plans to create 60 jobs as part of a €1m investment.
Cloud bursting
“Most complex calculations and models in business today are designed by business subject matter experts using Microsoft Excel. This might be for risk assessment, asset valuation, insurance product design, pricing or other calculations,” explained Peter Rose, CTO of TEKenable.
“To use the model’s calculations in its business systems, an IT expert must write thousands of lines of software to perform the model’s calculations which can take months to write, test and debug.
“We developed XL-a-Rate, a powerful solution that uses Excel as the specification of the calculations to be performed, and then executes those calculations, without using Excel, in an on-premise or secure cloud environment.
“Business professionals keep the familiar, feature-rich Excel interface but now their models can be published and consumed as enterprise class systems with increased processing speeds, collaboration tools and security.”
The platform is both encrypted and GDPR-compliant.
Established in 2002, TEKenable has global reach with operations in Ireland, UK and UAE with expertise across healthcare, financial services and the public sector. The company employs 60 people.
“XL-a-Rate leverages the power of the cloud to run the most complex calculations in seconds,” concludes Peter. “Models can be shared without fear of breakage, exposure of the model itself or loss of data integrity. It delivers zero cost impact verified model changes in days not months, with no model software to write or maintain.”
Pictured above (from left): TEKenable CTO Peter Rose with managing director Nick Connors.
Written by John Kennedy (john.kennedy3@boi.com)
Published: 20 July, 2020
