Our Strategy and Design Studies provide valuable insight into a project. Customer's request this service to evaluate the feasibility of a new project, or to evaluate new alternatives for on-going projects.

During the Strategy and Design Study, WCG personnel work closely with your organization to develop a project strategy that matches your goals with your capabilities.

The deliverables of Strategy and Design study are defined together with your organization. They typically include:

• Project Cost / Benefit Analysis Reviews the anticipated costs and benefits of a project, often comparing several implementation alternatives.
• Technical Architecture The technical architecture document describes the technology to be employed in a project and how it will be used. It describes the technical platform (Operating Systems, Web Servers, Databases, Languages), an application component layout, and a data flow between components
• Skills Assessment The skills assessment reviews your organizations capability to build and maintain the proposed solution. It locates skill gaps and recommends means for filling them through training or outside resources.

B2B connectivity requires delicate synchronization between two organizations. When establishing a new B2B relationship, it's essential to know both organizations' capabilities. Without an advanced understanding of the technologies involved, B2B project plans can quickly devolve and project benefits disappear. If either partner is new to XML or web services, this is a very real risk to your project. After developing over 50 partnering relationships, WCG knows what can make or break a B2B relationship. We have proven approaches for assisting partners with both producing and consuming web services.

Our partner assessment provides your organization crucial information about your business partner's capabilities.

• XML Skills. We assess your partner's XML skills. Everyone claims to be an XML expert, but if they stopping off at Barnes and Noble to by an XML book after your meeting, can they really support your needs?
• Web Service Protocols. Everyone has their own idea of what a web service is, to theirs match yours? If you know SOAP, are they asking for non-SOAP based XML over HTTP? Did they invent their own protocol?
• Security and Encryption. Are they ready for SSL? Do they rely on an 'unconventional' means of authentication? Some partners limit web service request by inbound TCP/IP address, others with standard HTTP Basic Authentication, yet other still use client certificates. Have they invented their own encryption?
• Environment. Do they have planned releases? Do they have distinct test and production environments that you can access as an outside business partner?

Web Services can be technically challenging. Knowing in advance what the challenges will be, and using our proven approaches for handling these challenges can save your B2B project.

We specialize in the Microsoft ASP and .NET platforms. We can help build your application using one of our proven application frameworks for .NET or classic ASP. We offer full application life-cycle skills

• .NET Web Applications - Top performance from .NET, through use of data caching.
• HTML Applications - break out of the browser sand-box, but keep the browser.
• Relational Databases - We are ADO .NET experts, with experience using Microsoft Access, Fox Pro, SQL Server (6.0 - 2000), Oracle, Sybase and Informix
• XML Databases - Our library of DOM extensions make XML a fully functional database.
• Application Scripting - We are experts using JavaScript from Windows Scripting Host (WSH), Internet Explorer, Internet Information Server and XSLT. We can also build and application that your users can program customizations for themselves.
• Application Installation - Your application is only as good as its installation program, we've learned all the tricks for building installation scripts, and can save your project weeks.