Florida Software Engineers

In the June 1 issue of CIO Magazine, I digested the talk of cloud computing and the variables associated with cost and cost benefit analysis. The core attraction of clouds si that companies can avoid buying and running hardware, software and other equipment by contracting with a services vendor to run selected systems or applications on its own infrastructure of virtualized servers. This common use of virtualized environments for SaaS (Software as a Service) is becoming a wide-eyed optimistic approach to managed technology with diversity relevant to project or company size. “The ’services’ you purchase are delievered in a standardized, multitenancy fashion that observers say will save one-third to one-half of your current costs.” Motorola with 33 SaaS applications, including Salesforce.com, “estimates the cost at one-third to one-half of what Motorola normally spends on those applications.”

Erik M. Zeterberg
Chief Executive Officer
Florida Software Engineers, LLC

Microsoft has released their new technological silver bullet The Azure™ Services Platform (Azure), the next flagship in their software enterprise. Cloud computing is a style of software as a service (SaaS) computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure “in the cloud” that supports them. Cloud computing services provides common purchases of Microsoft business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on Microsoft servers.

Azure™ is an internet-scale cloud services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services that can be used individually or together. Azure’s flexible and interoperable platform can be used to build new applications to run from the cloud or enhance existing applications with cloud-based capabilities. Its open architecture gives developers the choice to build web applications, applications running on connected devices, PCs, servers, or hybrid solutions offering the best of online and on-premises.

Azure reduces the need for up-front technology purchases, and it enables developers to quickly and easily create applications running in the cloud by using their existing skills with the Microsoft Visual Studio development environment and the Microsoft .NET Framework.

Microsoft also offers cloud applications ready for consumption by customers such as Windows Live™, Microsoft Dynamics CRM™, and other Microsoft Online Services for business such as Microsoft Exchange Online and SharePoint® Online. The Azure Services Platform lets developers provide their own unique customer offerings by offering the foundational components of compute, storage, and building block services to author and compose applications in the cloud.

The Azure Services Platform offers a range of businesses flexibility, control, and an affordable solution for running Web-scale applications. The services reduce tedious and expensive infrastructure management and planning and are built with security and reliability in mind, along with the option of a pay-as-you-go model.

I recently viewed an excellent webinar from Government Technology and the Center for Digital Government for a common sense discussion on Cloud Computing with Microsoft evangelism on Software + Services. The webinar can be viewed here.

 

Erik M. Zeterberg
Chief Executive Officer
Florida Software Engineers, LLC

Despite the economic slump, businesses that continue to invest and innovate will have significant competitive advantage both during and after it. Furthermore, organizations that look past the immediate challenges and toward the opportunities that the economic condition presents will have longevity and sustainability well after it.

“With the pace of innovation heating up, any enterprise that fails to replace 10 percent of its revenue stream annually is likely to be out of business within five years.”

The Economist magazine, 2003

IT will be at the center of this innovation; it is a key enabler for companies. IT decision makers such as Microsoft Architects will find themselves in high demand, and their expertise is one that will be used to its full extent. A Microsoft Architect poses the technical know-how to make complex and holistic decisions that affect unsurmounted dollars for an organization.

IT has become less of a function of strategic value to companies—no longer a necessary evil or cost center, but a real differentiating factor in the business of a company. Architects who have an understanding of forces will provide inherent alignment with the goals and objectives of a company.

Forces can be grouped into three high-level groups. These groups include the following:

External—Forces that are outside the organization forces and cannot be controlled
Business—Purely business-related forces that can be derived from the inside or outside
Internal—Forces that originate from the specific culture and operating model of a company
CIOs, COOs, and IT architects will take into consideration these forces, as they drive technology decisions, initiatives, projects, and purchasing. Understanding these forces will enable architects to snap to the business priorities and imperatives with more ease and less uncertainty. The following figure shows more detail on the industry forces and their effect on companies.
 

The role of a Microsoft architect is a unique one. Microsoft Architects are some of the more unbiased technology decision makers, and they have a holistic view of solutions in an enterprise. Their skill sets will be used now more than ever in a faltering economy.

We find that the cutting of budgets for IT does not correlate directly to IT not being important. It does show the need to streamline and improve IT. So, in essence, it means more IT activities. For Florida Software Engineers Architects, it means a realignment of architectural priorities.

Florida Software Engineers Architects engage in mission-critical, high–return-on-investment (ROI), low–total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) activities. For further information, regard our Microsoft Centric lessons learned from
Erik M. Zeterberg
Chief Executive Officer
Florida Software Engineers, LLC

The .NET Framework is Microsoft’s platform for building applications that have visually stunning user experiences, seamless and secure communication, and the ability to model a range of business processes. By providing you with a comprehensive and consistent programming model and a common set of APIs, the .NET Framework helps you to build applications that work the way you want, in the programming language you prefer, across software, services, and devices.

Secure, Multi-Language Development Platform. Developers and IT professionals can count on .NET as a powerful and robust software development technology that provides the security advancements, management tools, and updates you need to build, test, and deploy highly reliable and secure software. .NET supports the programming language you prefer by providing one multi-language development platform, so you can choose how you want to work. The Common Language Runtime (CLR) provides support for powerful, static languages like Visual Basic© and Visual C#©, and the advent of the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) means that dynamic languages, such as Managed Jscript, IronRuby and IronPython, are also supported.

Rapid, Model-Driven Development Paradigm. .NET offers pioneering solutions that enable rapid application development and result in dramatic increases in productivity. For example, the new ADO.NET Entity Framework offers a model-based development paradigm and a standards-based framework that raises the level of abstraction for database programming, allowing developers to cleanly separate one’s business logic, data and user interface. By programming against a conceptual application model instead of programming directly against a relational storage schema, developers can greatly reduce the amount of code and maintenance required for data-oriented applications.

Next-Generation User Experiences. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) provides a unified framework for building applications and high-fidelity experiences in Windows Vista that blend together application UI, documents, and media content, while exploiting the full power of the computer. WPF offers developers support for both 2D and 3D graphics, hardware accelerated effects, scalability to different form factors, interactive data visualization, and superior content readability. Further, with a common file format (XAML), designers can become an integral part of the development process by working alongside developers in a workflow that promotes creativity while maintaining full fidelity.

Cutting-Edge Web Application Development. ASP.NET is a free technology that enables Web developers to create anything from small, personal Web sites through to large, enterprise-class dynamic Web applications. Microsoft’s free AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) framework – ASP.NET AJAX – enables developers to quickly create more efficient, more interactive, and highly personalized Web experiences that work across all of the most popular browsers. And the new ASP.NET Dynamic Data functionality in Visual Studio 2008 uses a rich scaffolding framework that allows rapid data-driven Web development without writing any code.

Secure, Reliable Web Services. The service-oriented programming model of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is built on the Microsoft .NET Framework and simplifies development of connected systems and ensures interoperability. Windows Communication Foundation unifies a broad array of distributed systems capabilities in a composable and extensible architecture, spanning transports, security systems, messaging patterns, encodings, network topologies, and hosting models.

Enabling Mission-Critical Business Processes. With .NET, developers can use Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) to model a business process with code, enabling closer collaboration between developers and business process owners, and providing end users with better access to data, thereby improving productivity.

Superior Reach Across Devices and Platforms. The .NET Framework enables developers to build solutions for a wide array of devices, from personal computers and servers to mobile phones and embedded devices. Silverlight, a runtime that contains a subset of the .NET Framework, helps developers expand their reach by providing a cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET-based media experiences, advertising and rich interactive applications (RIAs).

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Erik M. Zeterberg
Chief Executive Officer
Florida Software Engineers, LLC

Technorati Profile

In meeting with The Southwest Florida Economic Development Office (EDO) in December of 2008, I met with Sue Noe, Business Assistance Manager, Warren Baucom, Business Assistance Specialist, and John Matthew Brock, Economic Research Analyst to discuss the demographic and statistical economic information to assess the investment of incorporating a Software Engineering Firm in Southwest Florida. The Southwest Florida Economic Development Office advised through demographic profiles and growth in Information Technology in Southwest Florida that key business climate issues in Information Technology provide private investments in Software Development is attracting Software Engineers to Southwest Florida. Florida Software Engineers, LLC’s outstanding attributes to labor costs and support services provides a breadth of methodologies in the Software Development Lifecycle that many Web Development Firms and Web Developers can’t produce high-skilled products in a competing business environment at a comparable costs.

 

As Chief Executive Officer of Florida Software Engineers, LLC, I invite you to contact me via phone, (239)220-7850 or email to ask for a cost benefit analysis of having your web or software project comply to the full Software Development Lifecycle of the Software Engineering Instititute of Carnegie Mellon University’s methodologies, as we implement these policies during your project at comparable or better cost than other Southwest Florida web development firms. Stay tuned for future blogs to expedite further statistical demographics and economic forecasts to support Software Engineering in Southwest Florida.

 

Erik M. Zeterberg
Chief Executive Officer
Florida Software Engineers, LLC

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Florida Software Engineers, LLC recently deployed a technological silver bullet Customer Relationship Management tool for Cross Media, LLC who participates in the Approved Vendor Program for Keller Williams Realty Incorporated. Contact Florida Software Engineers, LLC for a guided tour of the cutting edge, database intensive product which can put a stronghold on your sales contacts demographics and provide marketing campaigns to promote your products. The software package can be customized for all vertical industries. Contact the Florida Software Engineers Sales team by phone, (239)220-7850 or email.
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Erik M. Zeterberg
Chief Executive Officer
Florida Software Engineers, LLC