Frequently Asked Questions

Get to know us better

- Who we are

- Our focus - consulting, contracting, and recruiting

- On-Site Contracting or Consulting

- Project bidding and hourly billing

- Billing for incidentals

- Our computers, software licenses, or other equipment

- Our clients

- References

- Contracts

- Non-disclosure agreements

- Proprietary software ownership

- Invoicing

- Software Core Competencies

- Operating systems and platform specialties

- Development tools and programming languages

- Why do we say there is so much “bad” software out there?

Who we are:

We are a group of software architects, developers, and designers who work on projects for our clients. Our lead architects are considered industry gurus in their areas of specialty and our developers are certified, trained, and top-notch. We are located in the East Bay (San Francisco), California and have been in business since 1997. We opened our off-shore offices in Montreal and Bangalore, India in the year 2000.

Our focus - consulting, contracting, and recruiting:

We are all of these. If you’re having trouble finding that perfect employee, we use our vast industry networks to scout for your talent and place them in contract to hire situations. We know who to hire, and we can do the hardcore tech screening for you. We are true consultants with an analytical approach to the best pro/con analysis to determine the optimal solution for YOUR situation. We are a flexible, accomplished, and dependable team for hire. We can outsource your entire project, or simply help you through critical junctures by working directly with your in-house engineering staff.

On-Site Contracting or Consulting:

We have our own offices, computers, software licenses, testing environments, secure systems (VPNs, FTPs etc), and everything else we need to get the job done. We work at our location, your location and of course travel to our clients’ offices for meetings, troubleshooting, installation, training, anything required by the client to make them comfortable and trust our work ability and expertise.

Project bidding and hourly billing:

We do both. Usually we work by the hour to give you, the client, the most flexibility. Our clients like the flexibility and freedom of “do as I say” and “pay as we go”. Periodically, we will offer a fixed bid for a very well defined project. For some clients, we come up with a hybrid of both hourly and fixed bidding. In general, we do whatever makes the most sense for our client and the project in question.

Billing for incidentals:

We bill only for time that is directly related to actual design and development. This may include meetings and phone calls, but only if the subject matter pertains to producing the software. We never bill time for spent on “business” activities such as sales calls, initial consultations, contract negotiation, accounting, billing, education, equipment maintenance, or web-surfing.

Our computers, software licenses, or other equipment:

We have state of the art facilities both here and off-shore with all of the tools we need to work on most projects. When special, unusual, or proprietary software or equipment is required, we will ask our client to provide it to us for the length of the project.

Our clients:

We enjoy working with any size company, from Fortune 500 companies to start-ups. Most of our clients are located in Silicon Valley, but we frequently work with companies based all over the world. Our typical client is a medium sized firm with specialized programming needs but no available programmers on staff.

References:

We are happy to give you contacts at our current and former clients who are willing to take reference calls from potential clients. We’d be happy to send you their contact information.

Contracts:

We will work with you a mutually agreeable contract for work situations. You are our client, we exist to make you happy or we wouldn’t still be in business.

Non-disclosure agreements:

You might need to share sensitive information in order for us to do our job. Even without a written agreement, we always exercise a very high level of discretion in regard to your business operations and your trade secrets. We are happy to back that up in writing.

Proprietary software ownership:

In general, once a project is completed and paid for, you are the owner. In addition to the executable files, you will also receive source code, scripts, graphics, audio, project files, and anything else that is necessary to build, maintain, or extend the software. In most cases, we do retain the right to reuse the source code in future projects, for our other clients, as long as it does not contain trade secrets or any other proprietary or protected information. We can of course customize the terms to fit your project.

Invoicing:

If we are working for you by the hour, we will send you an invoice on the 16th and last day of each month. We may ask for a moderate retainer. If the project is a fixed bid, we normally require one-fourth up-front, and the rest in increments until completion of the project. All source code will remain in “escrow” until payment is made in full.

Software Core Competencies:

In addition to standard Windows and Web/Database applications, we also develop games, enterprise solutions, device drivers, image/audio processing systems, Pocket PC, Flash animation, Office and Web Services applications.

Operating systems and platform specialties:

We primarily develop for the entire family of Windows operating systems. We also have quality experience on Linux and UNIX, and a few developers who are hard core Mac experts. For web development, we most often use ASP/ASP.NET and SQL Server.

Development tools and programming languages:

Our primary development environment is Microsoft Visual Studio.NET. Our primary programming languages are C#, Delphi, C++, Java, JavaScript, and VB.NET. We do a lot of Web Services integration and interoperability as well (J2EE and .NET platforms).

Why do we say there is so much “bad” software out there?

Marketing wizards will tell you that you can advertise as the best, or you can advertise as the cheapest, but you can’t be both and expect to be credible, yet if you open up the Yellow Pages, everyone claims to be the highest quality with the lowest prices. We work with your budget and give you realistic assessments of price involvement with regards to duration, tools, and development time. With any project, large or small, achieving the right balance between cost, quality, and timeliness requires three essential ingredients: experience, expertise, and straightforward analytics. This is why we’re still in business today!