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How We Work
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How We Work
We Are A Service Based, Software Development Company
What Do We Do?
At its most basic level, we build Web sites! The primary emphasis of our Web development division is to build complex data driven Web systems. We have exhaustive experience in a range of industries, including online publications, social networking, and specialty retail.
Bluntly stated, we are software developers for hire. Our Web development team is a service based division which builds a broad range of Web applications for our customers. That means that you own the applications that we build for you. Our development agreements will not force you into maintaining a relationship with us... rather; we expect that our relationship will be built upon mutual satisfaction and trust. This allows both parties to work toward shared growth.
Partnerships
Under rare circumstances will we engage on a development project with an organization that wants us to write a Web application, and then walk away. We are looking for long term partners, relationships under which both parties can grow together. This gives us both a vested interest in the relationship, allowing us to align our organizational goals. Our objective is to become a valued extension of your own IT department.
Managed Hosting Facility
If your company currently operates a reasonably sized Web system, you have likely experienced in-fighting between your development team and your hosting partner. It's a common occurrence for each independent party to blame the other for systematic problems. For this reason, we have built a state-of-the-art data center, allowing us to build and manage your Web system, and to build and manage your hosted network environment. This gives us a tremendous capacity for managing the efficiency of your Web system in its local environment. Because of this, we are able to utilize your servers to their absolute capacities, and when problems do occur, we are able to react to them in a turn-key manner.
Enterprise Open Source Applications & Environments
If given the option, we will recommend Open Source utilities for the programming, and Open Source server applications for your Web system. This would generally mean using PHP as the primary server-size programming language, running on Linux or FreeBSD Servers, and using MySQL as the primary database engine for your system.
There are multiple benefits to managing a Web system built on an open source platform. First, there are generally no software licensing fees. This allows your development funds to be dedicated to the construction of the application itself. Second, in our experience, open source applications receive more frequent security upgrades based on the global contribution of the open source community.
Other Enterprise Applications & Environments
While we might suggest the use of open source applications and environments, by no means do we exclusively implement them. We have experience in nearly every Web based environment. These range from Windows Server running IIS and MS SQL Server, to IBM AS/400's (System i) running DB2.
Our Billing Structure
We owe the longevity of our business to our billing structure. It has allowed us to service the systems that we've built, and are currently building, for the long term. Most people are aware of various Web development firms that have come and gone. The primary reason for this is the difficulty in managing the seemingly infinite scope of most large Web systems.
While some perspective clients come to us more prepared than others to tackle the creation of a large Web system, without fail (100% of the time), the scope of each project changes throughout the development cycle. The reason for this is that as the Web system comes to fruition, and our clients are able to see it come together, the idea processes kick into high gear, and more ideas (and thus system requirements) come to light, and get added into the project requirements list. While this process is natural, and in the end the system will benefit from it, this creates complexities for us on various fronts. First, the client will often assume that we should have expected these changes and that they should be included in the already estimated work. Second, if we include the ideas that come to light after the estimation of a project, our profits can diminish dramatically.
Now, back to our billing structure... At the onset of a new project, we provide project estimates for the work that will be done, but we bill all development work at an hourly rate. What this means for you is that we will get as many of the required tasks completed within the original estimated project cost as we are able, and if there is room, we'll include some of the new ideas that come to light later. More importantly, we will be here for the long haul! We are far more capable of managing project scope by billing our work at an hourly rate, versus exclusively on a project quote/estimate basis.
In the end, our overriding goal is to establish a long term relationship with you and your team that is mutually beneficial for both parties. By positioning ourselves such that we can grow together, we will be far more capable of furthering the purposes of our combined goals.
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