Coding niche software systems for the telecom
and eventing industries since 1999.
WIS is owned and operated by Shaun Brassell, an Electrical Engineer graduate from the University of the Witwatersrand.
WIS does not specialise in any one type of solution, but rather makes use of various technologies available to meet the business requirements of the client.
Systems range from messaging applications and aggregation, through to telecommunication, telemetry, web server and data systems, through to special event systems.
Some projects have a hardware element which is where an electrical engineering skillset combined with the software element is useful.
Previous and current projects highlighting some of the above elements:
Global messaging is a telecommunications company based in Sandton that offers 24 hour callcenter services to a large number of clients. They also act as an SMS aggregator to the security industry providing time-sensitive alarm messaging for National (Chubb) Security. WIS has developed the entire IT infrastructure for Global Messaging from the Asterisk VOIP telephony system with E1 Gateway to Telkom providing for 2000 numbers, live video wall queue statistics, operator user interface for call capturing, back end database, call recording etc. On the SMS front, WIS has custom developed the Messaging Server that intelligently processes millions of messages per month, combining inputs over a variety of different protocol sets, and relaying to numerous cellular providers.
The project brief to WIS was to create an interactive video recording studio that would travel from school to school as part of identifying the face of KFC mini cricket. The idea was to provide a mock studio where the pupil would interview an AB De Villiers cardboard cutout. The system made use of an audio link between the pupil and an operator pretending to be AB De Villiers, along with videos screens that overlayed the pupil with a news-feed to reenact a live video broadcast, complete with countdown etc. Custom software was written to mix the audio and video, and to allow the operator to assign a score for future post processing.
WIS was contracted to create a soccer player management system for a countrywide tournament involving 700 schools. The project involved three parts, a user web interface for schools to register their players, an custom app loaded on a few tablets for tournament employees to capture additional information on registration day (player photographs, birth certificate scanning), and a Management portal for the tournament managers to pull reports and view statistics.
WIS provides a hosted SMS service to receive all delivery notification messages from its countrywide network of drivers upon successful delivery of packages. These messages are received from a variety of different cellular networks and injected into Netflorist's backend database server to complete the delivery transaction. WIS also provides outbound SMS services to Netflorist for password reset notifications etc.
WIS has provided event activation software to MTN since 2006. The first project began with the software solution for a university game called The MTN Campus Challenge which ran for a few years at various universities. MTN then contracted WIS in 2009 to begin writing the software platform for their crowd participation systems for the FIFA World Cup in 2010. This involved software for their entertainment gig rigs at the various stadiums and fan parks. WIS also provided the fan SMS competition portal for the duration of the tournament. WIS has subsequently produced interactive backpacks that have been used by MTN at various MTN sporting and cultural functions.
Other work includes systems for Wits University, Mastercard, University of Pretoria, BMW, Addidas, Vodacom, Virgin Active and Supersport. Many of these projects are brand participation in nature e.g. systems for malls, sporting activations, leaderboards etc, and generally involve a software and hardware component.
A variety of different software tools are used to code the various systems depending on the nature of the project.
Java has formed the backbone for the telemetry and telecommunication projects. It has been extensively used in the larger projects from low level serial communication, through to networking and GUI provisioning.
A combination of frameworks are used for client side development, ranging from vanilla HTML, CSS, and Javascript, though to Angular 7 / Typescript implementations.
PHP is mainly being used to build REST apis to interface data streams with backend storage, along with some data processing. The Slim Framework has proven useful for building REST apis for both Web and Mobile projects.
Mostly MySQL and MariaDB have been used for data storage, along with Amazon S3 for cloud storage. Database schema is designed to meet the criteria of the client, along with replication etc. Our largest running database has been running for 10 years and at its peak was processing and storing up to one million SMS messages per day, with a storage of in excess of 50 million records at any given time.
The Ionic Framework is used to write Apps and Progressive Web Apps. Most of the client apps to date have been for custom in-house consumption use and have centered around an Android compilation, though IOS can be provisioned off the same codebase. The apps have incorporated camera, microphone, barcode scanning and location based tracking with the use of Cordova.
Depending on whether the project is internal or cloud facing, various hosting or hardware platforms are chosen to meet the load requirements. Local hosting for smaller projects have mostly been with Hetzner, with larger projects preferring Amazon EC2. Both Linux and Windows have been used for in-house systems.
Shaun Brassell
Wireless Integration Solutions
BSc MSc Electrical Engineering (Wits)
enquiries@wis.co.za +27 83 250 8272