Advocate

The team at Essential all have passionate opinions and we thought we’d list some of the more relevant ones here so you can get a flavour of where we’re coming from.

Pragmatism

It may seem odd to start off a list of our causes with a note on pragmatism but hold on for a second and it’ll make perfect sense.  At Essential we believe in results first and though we may think highly of one technology over another we ultimately use the ‘right tool for the job’.  We don’t try forcing a square peg in a round hole because ultimately it helps no one.  So first and foremost we’re pragmatists.

Agile Development

Over the many years of software development a methodology called agile development has been born.  This simply concentrates its efforts on people and results.  Sounds simple doesn’t it?  You wouldn’t believe its taken the IT industry over 40 years to realise it but its eventually getting there.  We’re huge proponents of it.  Rather than concentrating on 1500 pages of documentation for a single small system feature which turns out to be very different to your requirements.  We communicate, prototype, mould and perfect your solution with you.  You get what you want.  That’s what agile development is about.

Open Source

Simply put, without open source technologies the technology and information industry would be years behind.  Many of our favourite applications have roots in open source.  Not simply the obvious ones like Mozilla Firefox, but even Microsoft Windows uses parts of open BSD source.We Don’t just believe in using open source but also putting back and so we’ll be releasing a range of projects to the community so everyone can benefit.

CakePHP

Our main language of choice for online development is PHP and one of the greatest frameworks we’ve used and had the most success with is CakePHP.  This framework fits very well with our Agile development methodology as it provides the ability to rapidly prototype systems and gain solid results in a fraction of the time.  Being a completely open source platform it has the support of thousands of international developers and companies.  With recommendations from IBM, Mozilla, The Onion Store and many more its certainly no half measure.

Asterisk

An open source PBX platform.  The capabilities of a well developed Asterisk system can put even the most expensive hardware solutions to shame.  Asterisk can handle call recording, monitoring, predictive dialling, fax2email, auto dialling, VoIP, conference calling and much much more.  You can get a full feature list here: Asterisk Features.