MicroCrest has a wealth of experience and has dealt with several high-profile clients. The following is a list of clients with whom either MicroCrest has dealt, or for whom MicroCrest employees have worked.
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Financial Services Electronic Commerce
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Software Development Science Research |
- Global Asset Management - an Asset Management house with offices throughout the world including London, Dublin, Zurich, Berlin, New York, Hong Kong, Kuwait and Bermuda.
- Subsidiary of UBS Warburg
- Provided consultancy to the global technology group, specifically in the area of fund dealing across the intranet.
- Mixed environment, with Microsoft front and middle tiers (ASP and COM), and an Oracle data tier. Heavy emphasis on XML-based technologies, most notably extensive use of XSLT to perform data transforms. Also, front end tailored heavily toward known IE client base (DHTML).
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Coutts' Head Office, 440 Strand, London |
- Internet-based Hardware/Software supplier, the UK satellite of a US parent. Traditionally, buy.com had used a single supplier (Ingram Micro), and so a variety of tactical solutions had been applied. One of the obvious areas in which buy.com could expand was to expand the site into other product groups, and therefore to use additional suppliers. Of course, this course of action meant that buy.com were forced to rethink some of their earlier tactical approaches
- Provided Technical Architecture service, helping buy.com refactor their web offering, from a 2-tier (ASP and SQL Server) system toward a multi-tier COM component-based system.
- Adoption of Microsoft DNA strategy meant early commercial exposure to Windows 2000, COM+ services and IIS 5.
- Provided guidance on Benchmarking the site (Segue SilkPerformer).
- In order to achieve supplier-independence, one of buy.com's key requirements was to convert proprietary-format supplier data into a generic format. MicroCrest supervised the evaluation and selection of suitable third-party products, finally settling on the Mercator product.
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Nationwide House, on the outskirts of Swindon, Wilts |
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- One of the UK's largest retail banks
- Provided consultancy on Barclays' BusinessMaster online banking product.
- Design was built heavily on Windows NT Technology - IIS web servers were used to publish Active Server pages to the user's browser. COM components wrapped messageware, ultimately communicating with the bank's Tandem databases.
- Involved in end-to-end design of the product, and in the definition of much of the architecture used. This included areas such as the analysis of business requirements, middleware design, error handling, multi-user record access, session maintenance, security, hardware specifications and database design.
- Aided Barclays in their recruitment process
- Provided not only consultancy service, but also aided in the delivery of some parts of the solution. This involved the use of tools such as Visual C++, ATL, and VB5 to develop COM objects, and the creation of web pages using HTML, Javascript and VBScript etc.
- Designed and implemented the "middleware" between the Presentation Servers (NT) and the bank's databases (Tandem NSK). Tectonic's "Krypton", a CORBA-compliant messageare product, was used. (A successor of Krypton now forms part of Compaq's Himalaya platform.) This service included development of both COM (ATL) and ANSI C (Tandem) components for Barclays.
- Investigated, on Barclay's behalf, the feasibility of using ISAPI filters/extensions for key parts of their solution.
- Also investigated (and delivered) the practicality of programmatically configuring IIS - the aim here being to produce an Installshield setup program which would enable completely repeatable installation of developed software onto Presentation Servers.
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IBM's UK Laboratories at Hursley, near Winchester |
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- Involved in the design and development of the "Purchase Online" B2B eProcurement product
- The system was based on (at the time) up-and-coming Microsoft technologies, and involved development in the then fledgling area of the Internet
- Backed initially by venture capital, BVR went on to gain sponsorship from Barclaycard, and formed a joint venture with Chase Manhattan in the USA, as the product developed
- Aided BVR in presentations to potential partners, in system design and proofs of concept, and finally in helping BVR set up a permanent operation in the USA
- Performed both development and leadership services in the development of new products, and in porting existing products onto new platforms
- Most notably, led the port of the Dr Solomon's AntiVirus Toolkit product onto the Windows NT platform
- Involved in the introduction of formal, recognised Quality Assurance into the company (ISO 9000)
- Represented Dr Solomon's at computer fairs and trade shows
- Helped Dr Solomon's ultimately in the release of four products
- Development, Operation and Maintenance of advanced software, which simulated the effects of high-energy electrical environments on spacecraft
- Design and Development of real-time data acquisition software, in ultra-high vacuum environments, essentially automating previously manual operations
- Design and Development of advanced analytical software, allowing the processing of high volumes of data readings, for the first time
- Involved in the introduction of formal, recognised Quality Assurance into the company (ISO 9000)
All products mentioned on this page are acknowledged to be Trademarks of their Respective owners
