Helium Platform Overview from a Developer Perspective

Overview

Helium is an aPaaS

The Helium platform was designed to allow rapid deployment of applications and integrations within Africa. To accomplish this it uses a custom DSL to express logic and initiate business services. Baked into the platform is the ability to integrate with the most popular services in Africa namely USSD, SMS aggregators and mobile money (mPesa). The Helium stack currently runs Java EE inside the Glassfish application server. The next iteration of Helium is planned to be a micro service framework allowing business logic to be expressed in JavaScript.

At its heart Helium exists to enable development of systems to solve real world problems. Telco's use can Mezzanine, and 3rd party developers, to implement the business logic for applications at a fraction of the cost, with the peace of mind. The peace of mind comes from knowing that the code runs on a platform that is scalable, safe and supports enterprise-grade applications.

Technology

  • Java EE 8
  • Glassfish
  • PostgreSQL
  • Linux
  • Antlr

Attributes

  • Multi-tennancy
  • Point-in-time recovery (PITR)  
  • SMS enabled Identity Management
  • Stand-alone desktop command line compiler for developers developing apps on the platform
  • SOA architecture
  • ISO/IEC 27001:2013 compliant
  • Supports Mobile Network Operator APIs for mobile money and USSD
  • Supports inbound and outbound SMS
  • Scheduler to execute functions at intervals.
  • Logic and data objects can be very easily exposed as RESTful APIs