Cost Effective Web Development

"Want not, waste not" is a fitting maxim for the latest breed of Web2.0 application developers being called to meet fantastical expectations with slashed budgets. From vendor of dishwashers wanting a "quick forum community" to "party hard" accountants launching a photo gallery; all and sundry would love to have the latest must have module on their website whether they have a need for it or not.

Fortunately for software developers, many of these "must have add-ons" are ripe for cherry picking from the multitude of SaaS (Software as a Service) providers that exist online today. For instance our ByngGallery component running through our ByngControl content management framework can now tap into a free Flickr account saving our clients on development, training and storage. Another example might be shipping off customers to hosted forum software using our Single Sign-on connector in the BaseCode. All these tricks help us meet our goal of satisfying our clients' needs and budgets whilst maintaining a high service level.

Community or consumer Web2.0 applications using SOA (Service oriented Architecture) are old news (way back from 2007!) so how about Enterprise2.0 and bolting together your mission critical CRM using off the shelf components? It might appear a real possibility with you see ads for "build your own CRM in 30 minutes", "CRM suitable for everything from hedge funds to hedge trimming" or "CRM: 10 pence per user per month". 10 pence per user per month? Really? It's all too easy to scoff and churn out the old adage of "pay peanuts, get monkeys" but with the commoditising of I.T., a provider such as Flickr may well sell licences for 10,000,000 users without breaking sweat meaning that your might just get a service level worth having.

Decide what is mission critical

Mission critical is a great term but depends rather critically on what your mission is. Take our hedge trimmer firm, HedgeTrim, they should shop around for packages which best serve their basic needs - these may well be components hosted in some alien land accessible only as a service. I would whole heartedly recommend that they do not endeavour on writing a de-facto CRM package but to take a safe path with someone who already has, such as Salesforce.com, Netsuite, ProBuilder or better still a community driven platform with a suite of community developed software such as Google Apps. This achieves safety and security both in the standards and the application.

Next consider a hedge fund spread betting change, like SpreadFair.com. Are they likely to cede control of their information and standards? Unlikely, they will control this is as tightly as they do their spreads, this is their competitive advantage in their market.

Identifying and ranking features during the specification of a system is of utmost important to ensure that savings are realised in the least critical areas. Taking a Phase One, Phase Two approach enables developers to look at what features are likely to be peripheral to the system and consequently which are fit for farming out to SOA service providers.

Is SOA in Enterprise2.0?

So we know we can use third party services to reduce the development bill but how about choosing the platform or web application framework? This is where Byng drew the line. We believe SOA is ready for pluggable modules (like shared engine and transmission components seen in the car industry) but vehemently want to control the overall product. Hence why Byng has the BaseCode - we want a light, flexible and extensible platform to deliver whatever we want, in whatever way our clients demand. Yes, we'll use any service that can save us time but committing to a platform and giving up the flexibility to change things as our environment demands, no thanks!

SaaS; it saves us time

Here are some services that our BaseCode talks to:

• Flickr (Gallery storage and organisation)
• OpenSocial (Authentication models)
• EjsChart (Graphing packages )
• ExtJS (Dashboards)
• CloudFS (File storage)
• Google Maps (Mapping)
• Google Checkout (Payment processing)
• Google (Site searches)
• Analytics (Site metrics)
• Ooyala (Video content)
• Vertical Response (newsletters)
• Jabber (IM systems)

PaaS; long shortcuts

Do platforms offer anything more than libraries and formalised programming patterns? If they do then we don't want anything to do with them. Our framework is light, it is more of a guideline - take it or leave it - platform using native coding patterns and taking care only of consistency.

Code generation to speed development and not simplification as the expense of flexibility is our policy. We want to work in an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) rather than a sandbox and want to be able to "go outside of the box", open doors here and there and remain flexible. We don't believe that many of the IDE systems can do that - yet.

In Summary...

Byng Systems is wild about the interoperability of services online and be sure that we'll jump at every opportunity to leverage these to our information - after all the more information we get our hands on the more we can provide our technology.

Look out for a growing portfolio of services plugging into Byng...