SEEDS Technologies specializes in laptop repairs, screen replacement, hard drives, virus removal, and serves Palatine, Arlington Heights, Buffalo Grove, Lombard, and surrounding Chicago suburbs. With our rates starting at $35, you can afford to fix your investment!

Laptop Computer Repair

Depending on the problems you are facing with your laptop, some things can be easily repaired while others require that a warranty be used to get the failed hardware part replaced from the manufacturer. In the latter scenario if your warranty has expired, often times it can compound your repair needs and can be very difficult to obtain a replacement part. We do have extensive resources that we utilize to get replacement parts, however, given the pricing of new hardware in today's market, sometimes it truly is viable to just buy a new one, with a warranty. Whichever the case, we are here for you and will gladly lend our expert knowledge to make sure the right information is presented to you, so you can make the right decision.

Now if your scenario is software issues, virus attacks, screen damage, hard drive crashing, boot up problems, battery issues, power supply problems, keyboard replacement, and memory failure, we can fix it with minimal fuss and often times even do the repair on-site.

Desktop Computer Repair

Desktop computer repair follows much of the same rules laptops do, however, hardware parts are generally easier to obtain should core components fail. Given the case themselves and because the size of the parts in a desktop are larger, there is a bit more forgiveness should something be altered from the original design.

Common Signs of Failure

This is a short list of some common signs that something went wrong, along with a helpful resource if available :

• Computer won't boot to Windows - This is usually a hardware failure, mis-configuration of hardware, or a corrupted master boot record on your hard disk drive. HOWTO Fix Boot Problems
• Hard drive chirps like a birdie, or grind really loud - This is due to the hard drive experiencing mechanical wear. You should backup everything immediately, as you can no longer trust your data is writing/reading to/from hard drive. HOWTO Backup Files
• When I try to run a program, Windows stops me with unknown errors - This sounds like a virus infection, and you need to assume your computer security is comprised, DO NOT USE for finances or personal matters until this is resolved.
• I got a window saying I have to buy this anti-spyware software, it says I'm infected - This is a trap, and it is bogus software written to lure you into purhasing phoney software from criminals. They will use this to obtain your credit card information, and possibly your identity. DO NOT continue, exit out or just power down your computer immediately!
• My CD won't load - this is due to failure of the motor or optical lens inside the drive, or it is bad media. Check the media by using another disc first.

Preventative Maintenance

As with anything mechanical or technological, it is always a good idea to either receive or perform some common preventative maintenance tasks. We do offer maintenance plans for your home and office, which include backup services, cleaning, and optimizing. Ask us today about our maintenance service! If you would like to perform your own maintenance because you just do not have the resources currently to use ours, here is a short list of what can be done, and a link for help if available :

• Take air can to visible components and cleant he dust from holes, crevices, and vents. Cleaning Guide
• Disable startup items that you no longer use, to gain back unwanted usage of memory. HOWTO Disable Startup Programs
• Remove programs that you no longer use, or that came with computer that you do not use at all.HOWTO Add/Remove Programs
• Make sure you run Microsoft Updates, Virus Software Updates, and any other critical updates on your computer software. Installing Windows Updates
• Do not place your computer in a restricted airspace, where it cannot get fresh cool air flow.
• Avoid spilling anything on your computer.
• If you have children using the computer, monitor their usage of it to ensure they are not damaging anything.
• Avoid underground web-sites and torrent servers that contain illegal software, pornography, and illegal music. These are breading grounds for virus pickups.
• Never install anything you do not full understand what it is doing.
• When installing software, choose CUSTOM instead of EASY installation option, to remove any unwanted additional software like "Toolbars".

SEEDS Technologies offers specialized exclusive e-commerce web development to all forms of business. With our 12 plus years of experience in web marketing, dynamic data driven content, XML integrations, payment gateways, freight integrations, interface design, application architectures, information security, and competitor research, why would you contract anyone else to build your digital storefront? With our rates as low as $500, gain back growth today and enter a new marketplace!

E-Commerce

Online sales have been steady on the rise for the past decade, and all projections from industry experts show no sign of it stopping anytime soon. Maybe you were an early adopter or have been one of the bunch that still hasn't ventured down this path with your business yet. Whatever the case, it is certain we can address your needs in a specialized manner and adapt a tailored solution for you.

When it comes to e-commerce, there is a lot of involvment between you as a store owner and us your digital store builder. Just like in the real world when you are building a structure, there are a lot of discussions, design questions, strategy decisions, and careful planning even before the foundation is poured. Good news is that we are seasoned experts at this and have the core of the requirements, design, and architectual planning already available to rapidly start gathering data requirements and marketing decisions, which means you save lots of money and reach your market faster.

A majority of the companies out there that handle e-commerce are not nearly as seasoned, and can only deliver a half-toned fraction of the entire needed spectrum. This is not only hurtful to business, but also ends up costing more money as things are re-designed, re-engineered, and ad-hoc'd together in such a way that you end up losing search optimization and important details fall through the cracks of the infrastructure.

Why Sell Online

Recently we released a Press Release touching a little bit on this subject, and have had great review on it. Please do read this article, as it might just catch an interest or explain something that has been left out from these paragraphs.

So why sell online? If an increase in sales revenue alone is not enough of a reason, allow us to elaborate on a circumstance that maybe will enlighten you. Meet Tom, Tom has a hardware store that his father had owned and Tom recently has been running the store in this troubled economy after his father fell ill. Right off the start, there are a few trouble indicators that could allow for sales revenue to drop, but first let us say Tom is not a new store owner. He has an MBA and has owned several other businesses as well, so by no means is he a rookie businessman. Today his customers are treated much like his father had treated them for 50 years. They come into the store, they ask a couple questions about the family, talk about politics, then get down to finding the right wood to build a deck this summer. Ok, well a lot of the customers have experienced difficult times with their own jobs, and have relocated their families in lieu of need. So customers are down overall for Tom, which means sales are down. The local market for him is not so happy, what are his options... Well being a savvy businessman he looks to the internet, and sees that he can communicate and still sell to his old customer who now lives in Arizona, and even help his customer with installation tips too over his website. His customer, John, loves that he can stay connected and contributable to Tom's Hardware store, since they are friends and he enjoys being loyal to Tom. Well, Tom realizes after proper search engine placement he has been gaining new local customers because Jay's Hardware Store, 30 miles away closed down, and on top of those new customers, Tom has gained a new breed of customers, the Digi-Gen babies who now are buying new homes after college, and oh how they love to buy online, and with text messaging! Tom's sales have tripled and in a recession, that is a miracle, his dad is watching over him clearly, right? Well, we do not know for certain, but we would like to believe so! Also, e-commerce has allowed for this new way of business to take place. This is revolutionary, don't shut your mind to the potential and the energy will transfer into kinetics and introduce more sales revenue, guaranteed!

Where Do I Start

Well, it is always good to start with planning before you pay someone for their time to start building something. If you have no solid direction for what you want to sell, or have no idea what target audience you want to sell too, that is quite alright, however, be prepared to spend a little bit more money as the constractor will have to do this research work for you. It is overall very dependant on the size of your company, your product catalogs, your customer base, and your marketing goals. If this is a new business, maybe you have to start with a domain name purchase from GoDaddy or if you have a domain, you have to think about if you want to re-do your entire web-site with this also? Really, planning and talking with us is your best first steps. Please call us if you have any questions, or need some guidance in certain areas, we love to help.

SEEDS Technologies has fast, secure, affordable, and reliable web hosting for Palatine, Arlington Heights, Buffalo Grove, Lombard, and surrounding Chicago suburbs. We do optimized Magento hosting and have award winning support, and our prices start from $7.95 per month!

Web Hosting

In case you are not familiar with the term "Web Hosting", it's just the act of "hosting" web pages on the internet. These "hosts" are just computers that are on the internet with ultra-fast connection speeds and a lot of computational power. Really, your very own computer you are using right now could be used to host web pages, a problem (among others) is if you are downloading lots of videos your web site viewers will have trouble seeing your site. So in general, hosting is provided by "Hosting Companies", like us! Now realize, that is an extremely watered down explanation, and does not include all the deep intracies of the hosting business, it was just to paint a picture. If you have ever looked for a hosting company, you will notice there are tens of thousands of them, and they pop up everyday. So why use us for hosting, why not use XYZ Hosting? Overall, our servers are secure, fast, reliable, and optimized for e-commerce, much like that of other companies. True we are not the cheapest kid on the block, and maybe not even the absolute fastest at times, however, it is today more about etiquette. Basically, the adage goes, if you buy web sites from us, you should host with us. It makes it so much easier for us to support and manage maintenance tasks for your web-sites, marketing campaigns, SSL securities, email issues, database administration, and parse through web traffic analytical details.

What Features Does Web Hosting Provide

Our web hosting provides an entire control panel called, "cPanel", that enables you to perform a variety of tasks. Let's talk about some of these tasks, and how they can be used.

Let us start with email. You bought your domain "www.myshop.com", and had us build you a really hip new site, right? Now you have elected to host with us as well, to follow our request, and now you're logged into cPanel. You want to have your very own email account, "sally@myshop.com", and would like to forward those emails to your "sally.does.hair@aol.com". No problem, in cPanel you just click on "Emails", and create new account, name it create password, and choose to forward to the desired email address. Easy, huh? Ok, email is out of the way, now what else can you use Web Hosting for? How about viewing all the traffic of your website, or to see if we did a good job making your site, and check your error log to see if we made mistakes. In cPanel once again, you just choose the task icon for "Server Logs", and you have "Access Logs" and "Error Logs". Wow, this is super easy stuff isn't it? Well, you're now administrating your account and doing basic server administration duties too. Good job! As you can see, Web Hosting is much much more than just hosting web pages! Just to finish off, other things you can do are : create databases, password protect web site directories, block image hijacking, see disk usage, change domain name records, create a security certificate signing request, install free community web scripts, learn how to make web sites, and create support tickets for us. All that for starting at $7.95 a month!

Optimized Magento Hosting

We do offer optimized Magento hosting for our e-commerce customers, and those who use Magento e-commerce platform. For those unaware, Magento is a community supported e-commerce platform designed and distributed under an open-source license. After you read up a bit on Magento, you should be noticing it's large scale community and also it's large code and database. Well, given the heavy object oriented programming design and the entity-attribute-value database model it uses, it's apparent that it needs different server requirements than a normal static web site, or even a standard dynamic e-commerce site. So, we have created just that, servers optimized with special caching mechanisms, added memory allocations, and refined hard drive partition tables.

SEEDS Technologies has a superior web design team, with a design focus in marketing for your brand. We use all the cutting edge technologies to ensure standards compliant code and perform user acceptance testing to confirm your launched site will be bug free and search engine optimized. Our prices start from $250 and we handle each new site as a special case.

Web Design

Our web design services are of the highest quality available. Not only does every one of our design members share the same true passion for web design, but, we are continually learning, sharing, and expirimenting with new techniques and standards to make sure your site stays ahead of the industry curves.

Web design has since it's inception dreamed about the day when interactivity could be brought to the viewer and without overloading their computer or network with heavy files, processing, or added software. We are proud to announce, that day has come! You can see that companies sharing that excitement throughout the industry are pioneers like : google.com, yahoo.com, bing.com, myspace.com, facebook.com, and many more... This is the time to be getting your digital branding developed and embedded into the hearts and minds of your customers, or target audiences. No longer is a just a standard web design company, or a nephew who "can make a web site", sufficient enough to handle the deeper marketing needs, analysis requirements, and exact pixel precise engineering required by today's web standards. If you want to gain market share, new customers, and expose yourself onto the world wide web, you have to take it very serious anymore, just don't tell that to our graphic design team, hah..

What's Involved in Web Design

To the average onlooker, the above question seems to resonate into the minds of those who have never had to design, create, and implement a web site for a living. Well, allow us to share some of the moments and experiences we go through on a daily basis, to let you understand more about what is involved in the web design process.

First, your site starts off with a blank canvas, maybe transparent even with nothing, not even a colored pixel. Then, based on your requirements, your submitted material, and your creative wishes, a graphic designer will dream up the next best web site and start to let the pixels fly into places they shouldn't.. After many many hair pulling late nights and cups of coffee, you will have several prototypes resembling what will be your future web site. First, it has to be reviewed by other team members and accepted, if and when that happens, some of them are submitted to you for your input. Great, this is the time that the designer frets the most.. "Gee, I hope they like my designs...", and the "Maybe they will like the logo placement...", and then here comes the project leader back to the designer with the results. Well it turns out, after some minor adjustments, you ended up liking his first design. Alright! Now it's onwards down the assembly line, and into the hands of the almighty frontend developers. These people are armed with a wide breadth of knowledge, shared and conjoined from both the creative graphics world, with that of the straight and narrow programming world. These people can take a graphic, slice it up like pseudo ninjas, and make little tiny things look like really big things, placed ever so perfect with amazing pixel control, and scripting anime. Your once lifeless graphic has been Frankenstein'ed into a living breathing thing, with funny names and symbols at its root, all hand written by the mind of the frontend ninjas. About this time, any requirements for database and dynamic content are being worked out with you, and the all so feared back-end developer. These people are like the large Groupers on the ocean floor, very deep in thought and submerged in method madness, just lounging very deep in the cold waters, and are hard to find. We should point out that, these developers are always having to take what gets dropped into the ocean and shredded by the frontend ninjas, and sew and stitch everything into a database trigger, view, field, table, or array of data types, meanwhile challenged with figuring out what is the best way to sanitize the user input for security purposes, and what can be serialized and re-sent back upstream to the frontend ninja, for his further workings. Well, well, well... Looks like it has come together nicely, the site functions, and looks good doing it! Great job team! Wait... how come there are no words? Ahh.. yes, that's "write", now comes the time to inject highly detailed market oriented words from the powerful, wordsmiths. These team members are highly trained and skilled in the art of social pursasion, market attachment, and subliminal customer delegation. They even have to do this all while pulling out of their brain the needs of the search engines and the flow of the content. Sounds like a difficult jobs to me. One standard keyword on google, can yield millions of results, so this person has to formulate the right combinations of words and their placement to ensure they even get picked up out of the web by those funny named web spiders.

Whew, ok we're done! Well... not yet. The site has content, functions, looks good.. but now we have to test it to make sure there are no bugs, mis-spelled content, mis-placed graphics, and the like. Part of this process if cross-browser testing. Every operating system and networked device can use a different web browser. Just when we thought we were in the clear, we're not. Turns out a lot of the frontend ninja's code isn't working correctly in some browsers. What gives? Well, that is the nature of this, not everything is made equal, browser developers have just recently attempted to conform to standards so people like frontend ninja don't commit suicide, but it is all still very new. So until then, we spend days sometimes on wrapping these bugs up. Well, after all that its launch time! Yay! Now we can launch this onto the web host servers. This process isn't always perfect either, there can be inconsistencies between development environments and web hosts, especially if you have chosen to use a third-party web host, where we have no control over their server setups.

After all is said and done, your site is up and sparkling fresh, clean, and attracting new customers everyday. Hopefully you have enjoyed this article a bit, and hopefully it gives you some insight as to what you need to get when you hire a web designer.

What Materials To Use

A lot of times, customers ask us what materials to use for submission to our design team. It is really just things like company pictures, company letter head, business cards, brochures, already written articles, and any other marketing material created for your business. Using this information our team can design a site that is tailored for you, exactly. Some other things to think about also are like, a list of competitors, their sites, and your target customer information. If you have any data regarding target audiences, like surveys or the like, that would be helpful too. Basically, anything that can allow your site to be developed like you would want it, and to reach marketing excellence.

SEEDS Technologies builds reliable networks for home and business. From wireless network installation to complete network and server administration, we can do it. With 12 plus years experience with networking, we offer a variety of exclusive networking services even virtualization into cloud computing!

Networking

We offer some pretty robust networking solutions for the home and business. Everything from routers, wireless, network cables, cabinets, servers, workstations, voip telephones, to backup stations, networked scanners, printers, offsite backups, home automation, business automation, security surveillance cameras, voip telephony ip-pbx's, point of sale systems, network accessed storages, biometric systems, and barcoding/inventory control systems. We even have solutions for your mobile fleets, like BlackBerry Enterprise Server and Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync Push, these server tools allow you to keep your teams handhelds in sync at all times with their desktop computers, wirelessly over the internet. Things like contacts, calendar events, tasks, notes, and other important personal information. So say, you are out with a customer and get his new address and email, plug it into your phone and it is synchronized over the wireless networks within seconds back to your desktop at the office. Now, his contact information is already in your list, and also on your server and getting backed up constantly if you have backup systems in place.

Wireless Networking

More recently it is good to see that more and more people are installing their own wireless networks, however, a lot of times we see that people are neglecting to secure them, despite all the warning and hype surrounding internet security. So we figured we should help a little bit and explain maybe why you would want to secure your wireless network, or have us do it.

First, wireless signals can be received by any network device capable of communicating on it's protocol. That means, neighbors, trespassers, and people with larger antennas can intercept your communications and if they know what they are doing, continue to read them without any headache. Unsecure data transferring, whether it's over a wired or wireless network, is very risky. Especially for sensitive personal data, or login details for programs and websites. With the world connected by networks, it is important to understand the difference between secure and unsecure, aside from the obvious contextual. Unsecure data is normally called "raw", or "plain text" data that can be viewed very easily, especially after the data "packets" have been recorded to the hijackers computer. Secure data is that exact same data, but instead prior to sending, it is encrypted with special cryptographic algorithms, or "ciphers", that have been created over the years to ensure every person can benefit from secure digital communication, not just the governments and authorities. These algorithms are usually these funny phrases like, Triple-DES (Triple Data Encryption Standard), AES (Advanced Encryption Standard), and TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol). Those three are the most common perhaps, and should be built into your wireless routing devices software by default. Usually there is a "key", assigned by you or a network administrator, involved that is used in the encryption process, it is fed into the alogrithm along with the raw data, and after the process cycles through it's logic, it will spit back an encrypted version of your data, also called the "cipher text". It is this, the cipher text, that you want to be transmitted over the network to the receiving device(s), not the plain text. Then, if this data is lost or intercepted, it is very very difficult for a hijacker to retreive the data's content, unless the "key" is compromised and the "cipher" is known. Once the transmission has been made to the receiving device, that device is also equipped with the key and knows the other details about how to "decrypt" the data. Once, thats done well it is treated just like it was before the transmission, as raw data. Hopefully, it is clear now why you want to make sure that your wireless configuration is secured and it is done so correctly. Things like a weak key, incorrect selection of encryption algorthims, and bad encryption protocols can still leave your network exposed to hackers. It is truly best to leave this sort of configuration to a professional, to keep security tight, especially since things are constantly changing.

VoIP Telephony

VoIP, or "Voice Over Internet Protocol", telephony is just that. It is using the internet to transmit your phone communcations. This new technology has a great value to businesses and homes that use phones that are not classified as "mobile" with a wireless carrier. Long distance charges have been eliminated with the new breads of wireless carriers and the demand for mobile technology, anymore you will be hard pressed to find a mobile plan that still charges for long distance. However, in the still existing world of "plain old telephone" lines, long distance fees and taxes are a very real part of your everyday business expenses. With a lot of business owners unaware or unsure of what exactly VoIP can do for them, and with human nature being to stick to the tried and true ways, we are constantly amazed at the amount of companies who have still not adopted VoIP telephones, at least for high communication departments or for branch office communication. So, we just wanted to reach out and help explain a little bit about VoIP.

Without getting into great technical details, allow us to say one thing first. VoIP can save you lots of money on your phone bills. Let's start with a few questions to illustrate how. First, are you already paying for an internet service provider? Do you have multiple office sites, that you have calling each other frequently? Do you perform outbound sales or service calls to your customers in different regions? Are these regions outside of your local minutes coverage? If you said yes at all, then there is room for savings. Since VoIP uses internet to transmit the phone calls, guess what, you more than likely already have internet, and that's great. So, that means you can now move to eliminate that PRI/BRI expense on your phone bill. Calling inter-office with a VoIP system is as easy as hitting extensions like 4123. This is because VoIP phones become an local network of phones, capable of communicating with each other freely, without incurring taxes and other long distance fees. If you need to make outbound calls, normally you might be hit with long distance fees again to contact that customer in a remote area of your region, but now, you can just call them and it goes across the internet and reaches them, so you save from the long distance once more.

So by now you're probably thinking, what are the cons? Well, there is really just one still in existence today, however it is slowly going away as the technology matures. It is pretty much the quality of the phone call. On a normal copper line with no data transmissions interferring, you maintain a pretty clear phone conversation, where as in a VoIP call you may experience quality like that of a cell phone. There are ways to tweak this to make it better or non-existent, and your phone systems adminstrator can do that for you, if you hire a reputable company.

Hopefully we have enlighten you into seeing how you can save money from your phone bills, and you are at all interested in further information, please do not hesitate to give us a call.

SEEDS Technologies spends a lot of time researching the best new hardware on the market, then gets our claws on them to start testing and reviewing them! So before you by anything from us you can be assured that we have spent a great length of time making sure that hardware part is of good quality, reliable, and everything you will need!

Computer Hardware

We offer a large variety of computer hardware, from used parts to new after market parts ready to be placed into your screaming game machine. We also do custom building of computers for you or your office. Normally we get the question, why buy a custom computer instead of a XYZ brand computer? Well, it is simple. Mass produced computers use original equipment parts, parts that undergo a very limited range of quality control. These parts are mass produced to fulfill a contract for the computer manufacturer, and are made to the lowest quality to preserve the manufacturers profit margins. With that said, brand new the entire computer with lower quality parts will still only get a one year manufacturer warranty. Those parts, given the capacitors and electronics put in will more than likely not fail within a year. That is a given shelf life for any electronic component. If it does, well your covered in your warranty. If it happens three years down the road, and you didn't spend the extra money on an extended warranty with the retail shop, then guess what... Yup, your probably going to buy a new computer, or call us. When you buy after market parts, they are designed, the quality is controlled, and the warranties are a lot longer on that individual part. Now, when you custom make an entire tower of these higher grade parts with longer warranties, guess what.. if you have a problem two years later with the graphics card, you get a replacement, covered by warranty. Even still, the even nicer thing is that, the quality of the parts are so much better, that your chances of even having part failure are completely minimized.

Custom built computers really are the way to go when it comes to getting a great quality computer at an affordable price, and while minimizing future headaches. Even better, if you do have a problem, we are local and can take care of you without you being transferred in and out of several different warranty departments, only to be denied of you claim. We have seen it time and time again, do not give in to large manufacturers, they have volume and can keep their prices down, but truthfully they are still keeping their margins high, realize that.

SEEDS Technologies has been writing custom software since 1996, from C programs to embedded or standalone PHP applications we do it all! We have written programs to automate data entry, order processing, document management, and more!

Custom Software

There will be a time in every businesses life that custom sofware needs to be developed to handle a special need that has arrived. Wether it be to sanitize vendor data going into a database system, regulating how much fluid needs to pass into a container, or the ability to receive alerts of customer service issues on your mobile device instantly, we can provide the software and support to meet any demand.

Our team of respected software engineers have time and time again been lucky enough to face some challenging problems, and been able to formulate solutions that have been exactly what the doctor ordered.

Custom Software or Shelf Software

We are always challenged by customers who would like a custom fitted software solution, however, they are willing to work with an already shelved software package that can do 70% of what they want. Often times their main driving force is of course, finance. It is very clear to them that XYZ Software is N dollars, and that it will do tasks that they need. When it comes to deciding on custom tailored software, they see an estimated amount of time, rates, and projections. Very hard to have that sit comfortably inside the stomach of an already stressed company owner, we can definetly relate. However, by not fully engaging that solid undertsanding of what the custom software company can do for you, you are leaving a large business decision to that of human nature, and a feeling that will lean to the "canned" solution, shearly because it is currently more tangible.

For example, imagine you are looking to buy software to record your customers data, schedule appointments, take notes, and push to your web site, for your remote sales force. Ok, well you found a solution for $5,000, it's "CustTracker". You download the demo, and play around with the software. After sending it through the gauntlet of tests, you realize it doesn't have a way for you to track which person you would like to assign to that customer for the scheduled apointment, and it absolutely wasn't designed with a web site in mind, so now what? Well, you contact the software developers, and ask if they can customize a version for you, they throw you a quote that is quite steep, way outside of your current budget. So, now you look for other software shops around, and get quotes, they all throw you some quotes and again they are outside of your budget, but this one company can do exactly what you want, and has even done this exact thing before for another customer of theirs. Well, the decision comes and you take the "canned" package, paying $5,000 for it and just figure that the rest of the features, you can do without. Great, you made a decision, nothing wrong with that. Now, you have your network administrator come and install the software onto your servers, fortunately you researched those requirements first, and there were no problems. He will invoice you $1,200 for that day, to go around and setup all the computers and servers with the new software. Ok, Monday morning rolls in, and you have a meeting with your employees, and have decided to show them the new software. They are very happy and pleased, as their old software was driving them crazy. You smile, feeling like you made the right decision, and now its time to train your employees. Time and money is invested for months into this to make sure your employees are utilizing the new software, and using it correctly. If there are support concerns they contact you, and you have the answer or you find the answer. Great, now your sales force is wondering if they can have access to the appointment data too. You kindly explain that currently this version won't allow for that to happen, and that's that. Ok, eight months go by, your company has been using this software no problems really, just learning curves and little glitches, to be expected. Now, all of a sudden you get a news brief, that your entire vendor data infrastructure will be changing. There is a new way of formatting data, and it has been adopted by your vendors. Wow, you stop and think.. this should be easy. You contact the software company again, they say, "Oh no, this is going to be a custom build". You say, "fine, just quote me...". After a week, their sales team submits to you a quote that sends chills down your spine, nearly three times the price of the software. Well, at this time you have elected to have them as your software choice, and you are in a hurry so you have no other option but to buy in, of course you did negogiate a little off the top. As you can see, now you are in twice as much as what a custom software house would have charged you, and you are locked in with a company who will continue to control your company's path everytime changes occur. It is always said, you control the company, don't let it control you. Well, this is going to be a bad situtation especially as the months turn into years. Eventually, you will have had enough and need to switch over to a different software package, and the money spent and time in training, will have to be thrown away. Now, you understand why just buying into a little bit more expensive, custom software solution now, can save you lots of grief and money on the back-end. Not to mention, custom software shops like us are open-source and what you buy you get, so you are free to take the source code to another developer in the event that our business relationship ends. So you can continue to benefit from the flexbility of customized software, and it truly becomes just a matter of hiring for the programming service, instead of buying a product.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Finally, what is software as a service? Well, in today's business world, it is ever so important to remain flexible and still have all the tools readily available to stay competetive. Software as a service is a way for us to offer software to people through the internet as its access point. Instead of you buying a software package and installing it on your local computer to use it, and keeping up with your own updates and the like. The software you need, you simply just buy a contracted or subscription based license that allows you access to this software over the internet for the term of your purchase. All the while, updates are transparent, fixes are continuously made, and the software is more capable of offering true flexibility, as you can use it from anywhere, anytime.

Chances are you have seen this model with all sorts of applications. Things like PayPal, Amazon Web Services, and Google Apps are just a few to mention.