We have tried “off the shelf” CMS solutions and always found that they are easy to set up in the first place. However, they quickly showed their limitations when our clients had any special requirements, as well as for future enhancements / additions. Therefore, we have developed bespoke web software for our CMS solutions since 2000. Today we have reached an advanced level of user friendliness, where things like changing an ordering sequence or building a navigation is done using drag and drop. This makes it much easier for our clients to learn and use the system.

The web is an evolving medium and newer technologies and approaches come out every day. In line with this, we have upgraded our applications and CMS systems to make optimal use of AJAX so that changes are reflected immediately without the page having to refresh. The innovative use of JavaScript to display various animation effects effectively eliminates the need for Flash on many occasions. This also makes the website load faster and more search engine friendly.

Faster broadband speeds have opened up new opportunities to provide web applications, replacing traditional desktop applications. The biggest advantage to our clients is that it eliminates the need for multiple desktop installations across geographically dispersed offices. This way, every office can see changes done by the other offices in real time. As all data is stored centrally on our servers with a sophisticated backup system, our clients don't have to worry about losing data. In the last few years, we have successfully replaced many desktop applications with equivalent web applications - keeping the look and feel very similar to the original software. We expect this area to grow even further in the coming years.

A custom built application does not necessarily mean starting development from scratch for a new project. We effectively use code and tools developed by us earlier, which we then combine, to generate a tailor-made solution for each of our clients. All our software is developed using the following technologies:

• Programming language: PHP, JavaScript, AJAX
• Database: MySQL
• Server: Linux operating system with Apache web server

Over recent years, this combination has developed into the most popular development platform on the internet - especially due to a lot of Open Source software which can be used for free under the GNU licence agreement.

The major advantages of this approach are:

• Lower costs for the development
• No one-off or on-going licence fees
• The software is written in a standard language and there are many companies and individuals around who can work with the code
• The above combination possibly gives one of the fastest outputs for most web applications 

Our software licence allows our clients

• to make changes to the code themselves or through any third party
• transfer the code to any server they choose

Our software licence does not allow our clients

• to sell or give the code to any third party
• use the code for any other internal project