Frequently Asked Questions

Why Safe Worlds?

Because many enterprises, particularly small to medium sized enterprises (SMB) now cannot afford to do e-business with the solutions currently available.  Big business with its vast resources can adapt to technical change faster than SMB.  This gives big business a big advantage and eventually creates what some call, the "digital divide".  By being able to adapt to e-business faster than their SMB competitors, big business can slash their operating costs and therefore be more competitive in the market place.  Big business has found for example that a “5 percent net gain in transaction efficiency is roughly equivalent to a 30 percent increase in revenues.” (Infoworld Magazine, 02/29/01)

Why can’t SMB do e-business now?

Mostly because the current start-up cost for e-business is too high.  It is as simple as that.  “The price tag (for a custom-built e-business system) is over $1 million.” (Forbes Magazine, 1/10/00)  “Full blown customer relationship management (CRM) systems can cost millions of dollars.” (InformationWeek 09/18/00)  “The Gartner Group has found that a typical B2B site costs about $1.2 million to develop and takes at least six months to build” (ComputerWeekly, e.businessreview, 10/00).  “Forrester said that over the next five years, business purchasers will spend an estimated $5.4 million to $22.9 million each to integrate into B2B e-marketplaces.” (e-commercetimes, 7/6/2001)  These costs are beyond the reach of most SME.  Safe World solves this problem with free, best practice e-business software that is better than anything else now on the market.

Why does e-Business cost so much?

Because:

• There is a dramatic shortage of skilled people who can design and build true e-business systems.
  

• There is no universal e-business standard. This means that every e-business system is custom built and because they are custom built without a common standard, very few e-business systems can “talk” to each other.  This is because, without a common standard, e-business systems cannot be fully integrated and made fully inter-operable.  They also cannot be scaled to any degree and made private and secure as most business owners demand.

• Custom built systems are not only costly to create but also costly to operate.  If you own one of these systems, you can also expect to have to update it regularly to keep up with new ideas and technologies.

Safe Worlds solves all of these problems with its free, total e-business system software.

Why isn’t there a common standard?

The Internet and other communications systems all work on standards.  However, until now, no one has been able to find/create a standard for e-business that is applicable to every business.  The reason for this is that business is a creation of the human mind and until now, no one has been able to understand how the human mind works.  This is the big breakthrough that Alan Metcalfe made in 1999.  He discovered universal logic and subsequently how to build fully integrated, fully interoperable e-business systems that embrace artificial intelligence.

How has IBS solved this problem?

IBS founder and Safe Worlds system designer Alan Metcalfe has spent more than 20 years working to discover the secret of artificial intelligence (AI) and how to design a single e-business system that can be applied to any business.  The Safe Worlds system is the result of all this effort.  Today we have in the Safe Worlds system, a unique e-business system that eliminates the up-front cost of getting into e-business (B2B, B2C and B2E).  Instead of having to charge users you a million dollars to build an e-business system, IBS will give you, FREE OF CHARGE, a copy of our unique system software.  You will be able to take this software, and with relative ease, apply it to your business, no matter how big or small it is.

How can IBS afford to give the software away for free?

Because Safe Worlds is the universal standard that the world is looking for, we only had to build the system once - now we can copy it and give it to any number of businesses that want it.  If it were not the global standard that the world is looking for, we could not do this

Also, because Safe Worlds is a fully integrated, fully interoperable system, the e-payments part of e-business is also integrated into our system.  This means that we can collect a normal service fee that is charged on financial transactions.  Instead of selling you the software at a high price like others do, we will give you the software you need to get started in e-business, and then charge you an affordable transaction fee on your usage of the system for financial transactions. 

If you do not make any e-payments, then the system is free.  If you do, the cost will be relatively very small compared with what you would otherwise pay.  This way you do not have to wait for e-business technology to become affordable, you can move to take advantage of e-business just like the big boys in business.  This means that you will no longer need to worry about holding your customers and your markets in these changing times when others are moving on them every day.  With Safe Worlds, you can compete with the best equipped and win.

Why do I have to pay Safe Worlds anything?

To function and deliver the system and the service that you need to do safe, private, and simple e-business, Safe Worlds must have a central support service and a global infrastructure that works somewhat like a credit card verification system.  You and every other user needs this capability to check the people you deal with and to ensure the overall security and availability of the system.  Safe Worlds on-going role is to provide you with this support service 24x7.  Without it, your system will be useless - you couldn't do e-business.  In the end, it is a very small price to pay for such a service.

How much do I have to pay?

A one percent (1%) Service Fee is charged on all financial transactions processed through the system.  In addition to this, if you have an IPTV Channel you may elect to use promotional services offered by Premium Channels within Safe Worlds IPTV.  If you do, there may be other charges.

How Does it Work?

The Universal Logic discovered by Alan Metcalfe in 1999, provides a unique common data structure and workflow methodology that is based on the way people think to control everything we do: even business.  Structuring data in this way makes it semantic (intelligent).  Data structured in this way can be universally shared among Safe Worlds systems so that each system knows exactly how to treat that data.  This is what makes Safe Worlds fully integrated and fully interoperable.

What Does It Do?

Safe Worlds is a private and secure, common platform and a business logic (process) that will enable you to quickly, effectively, and cost efficiently, transfer your business into cyberspace.  Some customization will be required to suit your specific requirements.  In most SMB instances however, you will find it is simply a matter of entering your information into the Safe Worlds system just like you would have to do if you purchased a multi-million dollar system from one of the big system vendors.  Where the savings in time and money are made is in the fact that you do not have to custom-build the basic e-business functions, because they already exist in Safe Worlds.  And because Safe Worlds is designed according to the way people think to do business, it is extremely intuitive (user friendly).  This saves you time and money learning how to use the system and then in operating it.

How long will it last?

A huge benefit of Safe Worlds is that it is the only e-business system that you will ever need to do e-business.  Unlike other business software that keeps on changing every year, the underlying methodology (universal logic) based on the ageless way that people think has enabled us to create a basic system that ought to never need changing - a least for the foreseeable future.  This means that you will be able to basically setup your business in Safe Worlds and forget it.  You can get on with running your business and making money for yourself, and not for the software companies. 

Once you install you business in Safe Worlds, you can forget about having to train and re-train your staff every year when the latest "upgrade" is released.  With Safe Worlds, you lock in your best practices once and they’re there forever.  Think of the savings this will mean for your business.  No longer will you have to spend weeks, training staff on best practices.  For businesses interested in ISO quality certification, this is a tremendous benefit.

Is it scalable?

Because it is based on universal logic (the way that people think), Safe Worlds has infinite scaling potential.  It is designed to handle trillions of transactions from billions of businesses.  Modern computerization and the Internet promote the idea of globalization.  However most companies cannot go global or consider expansion because they cannot manage growth, because there systems aren't scalable to that degree - not in a way they can afford, anyway. 

Many business failures are not due to bad products but because they do not have a management system that allows them to manage growth.  This is another challenge that Safe Worlds solves.  Safe Worlds allows you to put in place the most sophisticated supply chain, customer relations management (CRM), and enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that you can imagine, and operate in real time, all from a common user interface.

Will it integrate?  Is it inter-operable?

Because Safe Worlds is based on universal logic (the way that people think), it is fully integrated and fully inter-operable.  This means that billions of businesses can conduct trillions of transactions through the common Safe Worlds system as if they were interacting with their own database.  The unique and intelligent way that data is structured within Safe Worlds, according to universal logic, make this possible.  When all data is structured the same way it can be moved seamlessly throughout the system. 

Is it secure?

Security is the “Achilles heel” of all existing e-business systems.   Privacy and the ability to secure one's data assets and authenticate the identity of those with whom we are doing business are major issues for many businesses wanting to switch to e-business.  The reason that security and privacy are such major issues is that other system designers have so far been unable to figure out how to secure data and at the same time allow it to freely move between all sorts of different systems.  The Web does not help in this regard because it is an open playing field that is not designed for privacy and security.  Such openness has advantages, but it is disastrous for business because business is generally not conducted in the open street, but behind closed doors, in privacy and security. 

Because Safe Worlds is designed according to universal logic ( the way people think), the system creates secure, virtual worlds (bubbles, packets or ecosystems) for every thing within secure virtual private networks.  These virtual objects are easy to secure because they are all structured the same way, according to the same standard.  Security applied this way is also very strong, because, even though a hacker may somehow penetrate one bubble, this does not mean that he will be able to penetrate other secure bubbles within the system.  

What about Competitors? 

Most of the major software development houses in the world understand the need for full integration and interoperability.  Because they do not understand common logic however, they have been forced to develop their own business logic and applications based on that logic.  This approach creates isolated silos of information that all work on a different logic.  Such systems are very difficult and costly to integrate and make interoperable on an enterprise basis, let alone across industries and economies.  Gartner estimated a couple of years ago that for ever $1 invested in application software, it costs $5 to integrate it.  To overcome this problem, some companies have developed suites of products.  However, none of these suites has been combined into a total e-business system with universal application, like Safe Worlds. 

What about legacy systems?

First it is important to understand that we believe that the universal logic underpinning the Safe Worlds system is the universal data structure standard that all the world will ultimately have to use, to do e-business.  In 20-50 years from now, we believe that every business will need to be operating within Safe Worlds system to be competitive.  In the interim, for those entities with expensive, existing (legacy) systems that they cannot afford to abandon, Safe Worlds can and will be used as a "front end" (a common user interface) for these systems, so that business managers (and others) will have the immediate benefit of total integration and interoperability. 

The way this will happen is with so-called adapters that allow data to be mined out of such legacy databases and into Safe Worlds.  In this way, Safe Worlds could be used to integrate all the silos of information that now support the Web.  This would allow smart managers to not only move to a fully integrated, fully interoperable environment, but also to "cleanse" (check and restructure) at the same time.  How long this will take will depend on the extent of their databases and how much effort is invested in doing this.

What about Semantic Search? 

Because all data within Safe Worlds is structured semantically (according to universal logic) - this means that it can be semantically searched.  Safe Worlds already has semantic search.  It will take a couple of years however before sufficient data is available in semantic form, for Safe Worlds semantic search to be competitive with Web-based search engines like Google and Yahoo.  But, that day is coming.   

What about the big software players?

Eventually, we believe that everyone, even the big software houses that now dominate the IT industry will need to develop and deliver their systems in Safe Worlds.   It is now just a question of "when" this will happen.  The point to understand is that Safe Worlds does not compete with any other existing business, even though many existing IT businesses would like to be able to offer a comparable product.  Safe Worlds is a common service provider; it is a platform, like the World Wide Web (only private and secure); to some extent, like a phone company or a bank.  It is designed to be common to every business in the world, regardless of what they do.