Desmond Whitt, lead programming manager and principal, Big8Software, Inc.

"Our mission is to rapidly deliver highly functional, interactive, Web-enabled applications that deliver a positive first-year return on investment.

Our strategy flows from that mission."

1: Strive for Platform Independence

The Webserver might be Windows, Unix or Linux. And tomorrow a client may wish to change platforms. Platform independence means Web application investment holds its value through such a change. In order to maintain platform independence, we recommend that development be performed using PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, and Java, all are software programming languages that run on all the major platforms.

This is also why we develop sites in accordance with standards set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium. This ensures that our Websites are viewable on the widest range of operating systems and Web browser software.

2: Leverage Open Source Software Development

The breadth and quality of open source software is, today, widely recognized. The most prominent high tech companies in the world have embraced it. IBM, Sun Microsystems and Novell are examples.

3: Develop a Reusable Code Base

One objective of our technology strategy is to build a base of reusable code that can be recombined to ideally suit each client's needs. From this code base has come our many popular Website modules.

4: Keep the Authoring and Management Software on the Server

For security, maintainability, and control of costs, we place the management systems on the server, and do not require seat licenses or special software on client desktops. This means that clients can use our systems from computers running Windows, Macintosh, Linux or Unix. Further, they can log on from any machine that has access to the Internet, and that supports people who travel, work at home or work in the field. To do otherwise is to miss out on one the principal enabling facets of Internet technology.