WEB TECHNOLOGY

EXAMPLES OF OUR SOLUTIONS

06-06-2020

The purpose for business software is to provide solutions to problems. What problems? Do I have enough income forecasted for the next 6 months? How many estimates have been submitted for over 10 days? How many reports are due this week? And a thousand more. If the sentence starts with “Do”, “How”, “What”, “When”, etc., then that is a business problem looking for a solution.

Every business is unique!  Your software should match the way you run your business. You should never be forced to fit your business into some programmer’s idea of how your business should be run.

Custom software business solutions can include just about anything. Here are some examples:
Job Costing, Estimating, Invoicing, Labor Management, Expense Analysis, Data Security, Real-Time Budgeting and Forecasting, Client Retention, Data Collection and Analysis, Management Reporting and more.

Please take a minute and explore some of the samples of real solutions to real problems that S W Business Solutions has provided.

Heavy Equipment Maintenance

Business Networking Group

Meal and Nutrition Tracking




IS CUSTOM SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT WORTH IT?

06-06-2020

Ask business owners and they will generally tell you that it is too expensive to own business software.

This is no longer true.

In 2008, S W Business Solutions, LLC. was asked to perform a make-or-buy analysis for Event Planning software. Specifications were drawn up by the client and research was performed. There was only one piece of commercial software available that met most of the specifications. This software package (on sale) had a 5-year cost of ownership price of $77,001. We were able to estimate the project for a lifetime cost of $38,000.

The above price did not include the cost of the computer network that was needed to run the software since both packages were client-server based.

This was back in the days of client-server, expensive in-house computer networks. Today, the above price of software is greatly reduced; both for development and for hosting the software package in the Cloud.

S W Business Solutions, LLC has recently completed several packages for the environmental engineering and handyman communities for roughly $14,000. However, less complex system can be developed for as little as $3,000.

The temptation is to buy a commercial package for “only” $150 per month with “only” per seat licensing of $75 per month (for instance). This sounds great. However, doing the math, the annual cost without the per seat licensing is $1,800! For 5-years, that is $9,000. This cost is on-going forever.

Couple this with the fact that you can not have your own custom changes made how, and when, you wish. makes custom development affordable and the best option.

S W Business Solutions, LLC offers distributed payment plan where an initial payment of $1,000 to $2,000 is made and then the client pays a monthly fee until the total development fee is paid. Yet another reason to choose custom development.




WHY COLDFUSION?

06-05-2020

I keep hearing criticism from others that ColdFusion is old-fashioned and dead. Not so. Not by a long shot.

This year (2020) in October, we will attend the ColdFusion Summit (a developers and managers conference) for the sixth year in a row. It is a two-day conference with multiple, simultaneous sessions. Sessions focus heavily on new features of the ColdFusion world, future enhancements and security.

The newest version of ColdFusion will be released later this year and will expand on becoming the hub in a net of disparate microservices as well as a tool to create microservices. It is every bit a modern tool that keeps evolving. Every two years a new version is available.

What about cost?

ColdFusion server costs money. If you host your own server (or server farm), licensing is a serious issue. Years ago I discovered Hostek. They provide ColdFusion (and many other elements of the necessary stack) in a wide range of service models. You can have a site on a shared box for as little as $6 per month. Or, you can have managed services with dozens of boxes via their Managed Services model. Plus, everything in between. Best of all they are a major sponsor of the ColdFusion Summits and I have seen them working closely with the Adobe ColdFusion team.

Having your site at Hostek is secure (and GDPR compliant) and very affordable. No need for updating the servers or server software nor for making backups. I had a client clobber a database and call me at 7am in a panic. I called Hostek and they asked me if I wanted the 6am, the 2am or the previous 10pm backup restored. I selected the 2am backup and a couple minutes later the database was restored.

What about security?

I use a combination of Hostek, ColdFusion and MySQL (amo


 
Business Software From Business Professionals
michael@swbslv.com