Software Design
Software conforms to your business
Many software designers will make your company change how they do business to match
what your software can handle. This myopic approach to software design makes it
very difficult for businesses to adapt and becomes an uncomfortable fit as your
business grows. We have designed software to match how your business functions so
your software grows and is redesigned to match your business as it changes and adapts.
Be sure that you are making your software designs match your business with your
current software design firms or you are losing money and expending resources through
inefficiencies simply due to how your software is designed.
As we research your business model to design your software we complete an exhaustive
analysis of:
- Current software design
- Software design limitations
- Impact of your software design on your hardware infrastructure
- How your software design puts load on your database
- Software design methodologies
- New software designer approaches to streamline your business
Software needs to be modular like Lego bricks
Software that is designed like Lego bricks can be "snapped" together in many ways
without having to re-code a given application. This modularity allows for us to
build software "blocks" that are tested, quality assured (QA), and secured one time,
so each time we reuse that particular piece, we don't have to go back and rewire
everything each time. This saves you time and money and helps you get the maximum
value from your software investment.
The trick to building modular software components is to keep their functions very
atomic. Instead of an "e-commerce" application, instead we construct and reuse a
catalog browser, a shopping cart, a payment gateway, and other components that together
form a collective e-commerce application. Then, when we need to layer in new catalog
types or alternate payment methods, we can do it easily without replumbing the application.
We can also do the same thing at the database level where the software application
talks to your underlying database. This "repository model" is a very effective way
to install plumbing from your database to your software application in a way that
can be reused over and over again. The repository pattern can help you save time
by allowing your software applications to communicate easily with any type of database
or data source. The key is effective and intelligent software design.
Software designs need to be smart where needed and dumb everywhere else
This may seem like the opposite of what you might expect, but the simpler software
is, the more effective it will be to you over the long-term. Software that tries
to be smart where it's not needed effectively wastes effort and time while increasing
complexity. Think of a new car that has every fancy gizmo on the planet in it. It
means that you get to enjoy benefits that may not be very relevant to driving your
car to work, but meanwhile your maintenance cost and risk of expensive repairs go
up significantly, for a very small improvement in value. While you can have software
that is fancy with all the bells and whistles, these should not be integrated into
the mission critical aspects of your software design. Each designed software component
should be as atomic as possible with a very simple and single-purpose function so
that each component is easy to maintain and operate.
In similar fashion, the data that we retrieve for our software designs should be
as dumb as possible. Take an example where we get data for all of our sales for
the year and then we add them up for each month for display in our software application.
Instead of bringing all of the individual monthly transactions from the database,
storing them in large software arrays and then doing the subsequent math on them,
the database should be designed to provide this information "pre-added". By doing
this work in advance, our software module can be very dumb. It's job now becomes
"ask the database and show it". This also allows our software design to keep the
bulk of the business rules and business logic out of the front end design tier (what
the customer or user sees).
Software designs that are reusable "evolve" faster
Many companies will use Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) software designs because
they seem like a safer bet. This is generally due to the fact that so many other
companies have used these software designs that their collective input has served
to make the overall application better, more secure, and more "tested". We believe
in a similar principle.
While our software designs are not "off the shelf", they are receiving the collective
benefit of many other companies' input and testing. Because the root, core components
are reused from client to client, they receive this evolutionary benefit. This is
why we do not sell software, we license our component library to our customers in
a "closed source" license. This type of licensing generally means that you are buying
into our source code "family" and while you continue your monthly license maintenance
fees, you get to live in our software house and you get to use our software modules.
In this way, all of the software designed assets that we develop are available to
you (and us) as we construct unique combinations of these Lego bricks to conform
to your business. This level of flexibility results in cost savings, better applications,
more secure software designs and more innovation.
Software Designers
Our software designers have mastered the art of quality software design including
the ability to conform the software designs to match your business process. Our
specialties include:
- ASP.net
- C#
- Webforms
- Server-Side Code
- Client-Side Code
- User Interface (UI) Design
- n-Tire Application Design