Unidev – Software Development

Author Archive

On January 1, 1990, Unidev was founded. Of course it was a lot different then. Initially we (the two of us) did custom development mostly in Clipper. About 6 months after we started, things started to pick up and we added another programmer. This was all on premises programming mostly for smaller companies. We saw steady growth for the next year. In 1991, we got a pretty good sized project for a Fortune 1000 company. We were just in the right place at the right time on this one. There just were not that many shops specializing in PC development at that time. Through the 90s, the field consulting business grew nicely. Around 2001 with the end of Y2K, the .com bust and 9/11, business really slowed down. We shifted to doing more in house projects and have picked up a number of very strong customers with long term contracts. That business continues to show solid growth for us today. We’ll continue to adapt to the needs of our customers and I hope to be here another 20 years.

An important but often neglected consideration when contracting for the custom development of your web site or software application are the long term issues such as who owns the source code, is it updated, who maintains the code and do you have the right to change vendors down the line and under what circumstances. While this has been an issue for a long time with custom software development, it is becoming much more common now with custom web sites as they become much more powerful through the use of content management tools and e-commerce components. In the past, with a simple brochure site, you could throw away the old one and develop something new to replace it. With today’s powerful tools, a sites appearance can change but the background code can last for many years.

In most cases, a web design or software development company will have some standard code libraries that they utilize for each project. This is a good thing in that it allows you to get more function usually at a lower cost and faster than developing everything just for you. These libraries could have been developed over a long time across a large number of customers. To replicate them from scratch could cost more than your entire project. The potential issue that you need to resolve in your contract is how do those common libraries affect your ability to upgrade long term. Web server platforms, operating systems and technologies are constantly changing. Are those libraries continually updated to the latest versions? What happens if the vendor goes out of business or decides to no longer support those libraries? What happens if you want to change vendors? At a minimum, you should consider software escrow with a trusted third party from whom you will be able to get the source code if your current vendor goes out of business or no longer supports the software.

Also, you should consult your lawyer about the ownership of the code and content being developed for your site. If you are having work done overseas, then you should understand that any enforcement of your intellectual property rights or ownership of the source code is going to be difficult at best. Trying to prevent a foreign entity from divulging or reusing your proprietary information would be an expensive and difficult effort.

If you are have enhancements or modifications done to your software, make sure you have the very latest source code when it is complete. The software developer may or may not keep good track of small modifications made to your programs. It is critical that you or your vendor have the ability to rebuild your site at any time from scratch and that you have some legal recourse to obtain all of the source code if the vendor ceases business. I would also try to get the source code if the business unit you worked with is sold. The new owner may have different ideas about how/if you are supported.

In summary, you need to really understand exactly what you are buying and consider what options you have going forward. Without source code (and/or the legal right to it), you will have limited options if your vendor goes out of business, he decides to abandon the software, you have a falling out with the vendor or you wish to change vendors.

Kiosk applications and other self-service systems are rapidly growing business area.  Internet connectivity, a greater variety of interface equipment and prices that continue to drop are enabling the cost-effective deployment of an ever widening array of applications. Hardware is available for a wide spectrum of requirements. Vendors such as NCR and 5point can meet most any need

Kiosk Software application development is relatively straightforward. Many kiosk applications now use an ordinary PC attached to various more specialized interface equipment such as touchscreens, card readers, special keyboards, and trackballs. Equipment and kiosks can be purchased for either indoor or outdoor usage, outdoor equipment is noticably more expensive.  Outdoor kiosks have special needs due to weather, water and sunlight.  

Usually either .NET or Java is used as an application language. The operating system is either Linux or Windows XP. Kiosk applications can be a specialized web site program or more traditional client application.  There are special security programs for controlling access and monitoring the kiosks (such as Kioware). These programs prevent access to the computer or any application other than those specifically permitted.

Touchscreen applications are much like any other except the interface elements typically have to be much larger. This can be especially challenging when working with spreadsheet like programs or interfaces. Most interface hardware available today has a well defined software API and can usually interact seamlessly with the programming.

Unidev recently completed two separate kiosk applications. One was an application which allowed visitors to search a large database of products and images to obtain detailed information about the products and pricing. By automatically providing this information on a round the clock basis, the vendor is able to interact with all potential customers even when salespeople are not available.

 The other application provides an automated method for filling out and validating data entry forms by customers. This application saves a considerable amount of labor as well as ensures the data is correctly filled out and validated while the customer is on site saving considerable rework.

Both of these applications communicate with a central server for obtaining updates of both code and data, sending report information to the server and monitoring. The server applications provide a central data collection point for management reports.

Self-service kiosks have proven themselves to be a cost effective tool for both labor savings and improving service levels to customers.

2007 saw continued growth and expansion of the web marketing and web design service lines of The Net Impact business unit.  The web development team went through a number of process changes over the year as staff was added. A new formal development methodology was implemented in conjunction with a new enterprise project management system. These changes allowed for much improved communications with customers and with other teams in the company. The Net Impact formed several strategic partnerships in the 4th quarter that will both expand the potential client base as well as significantly increase the sales efforts for the services.

The software development and outsourcing groups had the strongest growth for the Unidev business unit. Outsourcing development, production support and maintenance continues to be a strong and growing revenue contributor. The software development team primarily used .NET and J2EE this last year.  We saw very little demand for other technologies. An important goal for 2007 was to improve development methodologies and processes in order to deploy products more rapidly. The software group implemented a much improved enterprise project management system tool as well as organizational and process changes to successfully meet this goal.  

2007 was a year of significant growth and change within the company as The Net Impact became a fully integrated business unit. 2008 should be a great year as we continue to build and improve on 2007. For 2008 we will be working to increase our commercial applications integration services, developing new and improved technology solutions to web marketing and increasing our mobile applications development efforts.

Keeping a medium sized contract programming company up to speed on the latest technologies is a daily challenge. With a wide variety of technologies and skillsets in use at any given time and with the future technology needs of the company being very customer driven, it can be very difficult to put together individualized training plans. Our solution was to develop a more ‘university’ environment where we constantly have optional classes on a wide variety of new and current technologies. In this way, employees are able to choose which directions they feel works best for them and they are able to investigate a variety of choices without having to commit to a particular path. In our experience, this has worked quite well with a number of surprises about which directions people choose. With an array of topics such as J2EE, C# .NET, Web Marketing methods, HTML, Project Management, RAD and Network Architecture, employees can explore many possibilities. Unidev has a number of types of work including software developers who work on customer projects at the development center, technology consultants who work both at the customer site and in-house, Web marketing consultants and IT staffing personnel who augment customer development teams. This variety of work along with the various technologies employed makes for a very interesting learning environment.

We’ve had the opportunity to work with a lot of new technologies lately. Sometimes with friendly customer sites ;> but mostly within our own sites. Unidev strongly encourages and supports everyone within the company experimenting with new technologies as they come around. We do this by teaching internal classes, providing test web sites, providing a variety of real live high volume web sites for production testing as well as having a test lab with different operating systems, languages and browsers, Linux and Windows servers and pretty much any commercial software you could imagine.

The results of this policy are manyfold. The primary benefit of this goes to our customers as it ensures that we are using the very best available methods and tools for developing their software and websites. Recently a large customer with SQL Server and DB2 databases needed several dynamic data driven web pages quickly. We were able to deploy an Ajax tool we had created as an experiment for one of our internal web sites that worked very well and we were able to get the site developed very quickly.

Today we are continuing to experiment in the Windows .Net, Java/J2EE and Linux PHP areas. We continue working with new Ajax tools as well as Ruby on Rails, Microsoft Silverlight and databases, BLOGS, social networking, Hibernate, XML data messaging, RSS feeds and RSS feed readers (used to display news on the unidev home page).

Good Stuff

This series of posts on Unidev is for potential customers or employees to learn a little bit more about this company, it’s history and it’s people.

Unidev has three major service lines, custom software development, consulting and staffing. Over the years the relative size of each area as varied as the market has evolved. In the early 1990’s staffing was the main component and that area grew consistently throughout the 90’s peaking with the dotcom era and Y2k. After those bubbles burst, the staffing area became much more challenging and difficult, at least for us.

With the advent and rapid growth of the Internet, the software development area, especially web development, became a much stronger growth area. The initial web sites for companies tended to be pretty simple affairs, primarily just brouchures. At the time, we didn’t have a lot of creative types so we didn’t get too much into this. As companies learned more of the capabilities of the Internet, they started developing their second generation sites which required much more programming and often real time interfaces with their internal systems.

 These new requirements fit much better into our background as application developers and this became a strong growth area for us.

More to come….

Unidev launched it’s company blog. The purpose of the blog is to handle company communications and to help present technical information to the public.