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.
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).
Private Bank, active in several jurisdictions including UK, Jersey and
Switzerland
Provided consultancy service to Coutts for their "Coutts Online"
service
Consultancy service has included suggesting Technical Architecture and
appropriate products, and has involved liaison with third-party suppliers
and validation of third-party designs
Supervised the refactoring of Coutts' system, from an ASP/COM-based solution,
toward a J2EE-based solution
Supervised the product selection process for the major components of the
system, including Application Server, Content Management System, Authentication
mechanism, Personalisation Engine and Search Engine
Provided consultancy regarding issues with Coutts' current (Microsoft-based)
site
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.
Nationwide House, on the outskirts of Swindon,
Wilts
The UK's largest Building Society
Provided consultancy initially on Nationwide's Internet Banking product,
which used Microsoft architectures (IIS, COM, ASP, SQL Server).
Lead role in refactoring Nationwide's existing offering, in the area of
online application forms. Re-architected the existing model, including delivery
of Data Model and the Object Model (Visual Modeller). The solution scaled
to around 10 products, delivered through a variety of channels
Performed some Business analysis, including liaison with external Design/Usability
Consultants
Provided Technical and managerial guidance provided to a medium-sized
team, including project planning/tracking (PMW)
Over time, became increasingly involved with Nationwide's core strategy
team, which had responsibility not only for individual products/services,
but for the technical strategy of the Society as a whole
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.
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