Your online presence is becoming an increasingly valuable commodity. As technology accelerates into the future we can help you stay ahead of the game by helping you to produce and manage your online face onto the world.

As you can see from our existing clients, Essential Systems, has experience in a range of industries spanning finance, community, education and technology. We've been leaders in the development of web-based applications and websites enabling us to leverage the technology to benefit your company rapidly and on budget.

Design

Your sites design is as important as its functionality. Whether its an internal application for use by employees or customer facing the design and interface of your system is paramount. Using modern technology with a strong accessibility focus your design will be more than just a flashy centrepeice. Providing a user interface which is simple, clean and powerful no matter what level of experience the user is at.

With our flexible and open iterative design approach you'll get a full feel of how your system or site will appear with no hidden suprises.
The Method

Traditionally a project would be penned in the early stages and then taken to development. Changes discouraged and after 6 months a solution is presented. As the client hasn't been involved from start to finish the end product can often be unsatisfactory. Then there's the time involved with over 75% of IT projects failing each year and 90% of those succeeding being late it's clear other methods are needed to develop applications.

Essential Systems are strong proponents of Agile Development. By this we mean:

• Working Software over excessive documentation - Working software is the key indicator of progress. Documentation is far too often used as an excuse for lack of product.
• Responding to change gracefully and reliably - Change is one of lifes great inevitables and so software should change too, without breaking, costing the earth or causing pain.
• Solid Communication - You as the customer know what you want. So rather than us telling you how its going to be done we'll work together with you to find the solution that fits your business.
• Customer Focus over contract negotiation - Your happiness is our key goal and so we focus on making a system that fits 100% with your ideas.

The Technologies

Technology Icon With a team of highly skilled and experienced staff we're able to provide a wide range of solutions to fit any existing system architecture. Whether you have a legacy Windows server or new Linux architecture we can help develop a site or application that fits with your business needs from the beginning.

Here's just some of the technology we use at Essential Systems. If your not sure what you have available then simply contact us and we can help you find out.

• The LAMP Stack - One of the most well established and reliable technology stacks in the world powering sites like Yahoo, Digg, YouTube and Facebook. LAMP stands for the 4 key technologies involved:
  • Linux (the OS) - The secure and powerful internet server running on over 70% of servers worldwide.
  • Apache (server) - Open source web server.
  • MySQL (database) - Incredibly flexible and fast database providing as much functionality as the most expensive Oracle solutions including clustering, replication and great SQL compliance.
  • PHP (language) - The development language of the web.
• CakePHP - As farely early adopters of CakePHP, Essential Systems see great potential in this PHP-based framework. providing the ability to develop new online systems with unprecedented speed and with a robustness and flexibility unseen in other platforms (except maybe Ruby on Rails).
• ASP - The key web platform for Microsoft servers. Active Server Pages provides easy integration with existing legacy Microsoft systems as well as newer .Net based platforms.
• Python - Not as well known but one of the biggest scripting languages in the world. Second only to PHP for its use in web development Python is used by major internet players like Google and Yahoo to provide their core services. At Essential Systems we consider it a key tool in our armoury.

 

Web 2.0

"Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform."

In the past 4 years the web has seen significant changes and Essential Systems is well placed to take advantage of those. Already a number of clients systems and products integrate with third party services provided by Google, Yahoo and MSN. Many of our sites have a strong user focus enabling solid relationships and clear brand penetration with our audiences.