The Deversus Blog
A Custom Software Development Company’s Blog
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Deversus is pleased to announce that it has launched a location-based iPhone application, built on its proprietary Find Closest Framework. BoozeHound — an innovative liquor store finder app for Canadians — allows people to find the nearest liquor store with a single touch of the finger.
We recently upgraded our web server to a dedicated package with 1&1. After being moved to the wrong type of server, we called 1&1’s customer service department to try and have the issue resolved. Our experience with them was so bad, I’ve decided to write a short article about the importance of customer service and the consequences that even one bad customer experience can bring.
Our Attempt to Upgrade Our Hosting Package with 1and1
The issue, in a nutshell, was that we were misinformed about what server package we were being upgraded to. Being a customer with 1&1 Internet for about 6 years (transferring the account from my old web development business to Deversus in between), we’ve grown to the point where we require a dedicated web server to meet our needs. I used 1and1’s Switch Package feature via their control panel to process the upgrade. The Switch Package experience was awful, at best. It gave a terse listing of the available servers and their associated costs, with no description or links to indicate what the server package contained. After Googleing the package of interest (the 1&1 Dedicated Server Dual-Core M Website), we decided to go with that (as a caveat, the Dual-Core M package description we read was from the 1and1 UK website and is no longer on the US website).
Three days later, the upgrade was complete — sort of. It was at this point that we realized we had been upgraded to 1and1’s “dedicated managed server” and not a “dedicated root server” like we were expecting. We hadn’t a clue that there was even such an option. While one could blame us for not doing our due diligence to make sure of what we were getting, the general lack of information throughout the process was simply unacceptable.
Today we are proud to unveil the third version of our corporate website, deversus.com. We’ve given our new site a beautiful Web 2.0 look and feel as well as expanded our testimonial and showcase sections. Our services section has been separated into distinct categories, too, so you can easily find what’s most relevant to your business. Also, we built the site using our in-house CMS, which will allow us to easily keep our content fresh. If you have any comments or feedback regarding our new site, contact us or leave a comment here!
Over the years developing web sites and web applications, we’ve noticed a couple things about our development process. We’re very passionate about the work we do and we love to go that extra mile for our clients. As such, there is a great temptation to investigate and utilize new, cool technologies and deliver snazzy features to enhance our projects. At the same time, we must be very aware of our clients’ budget and ensure they are receiving the features they need before the features they (or we) want (as described in our Requirement Engineering article). Furthermore, there are features that can creep into projects that are nice to have, but mostly unnecessary. The term gold plating describes this collective set of features.
Requirements engineering is the first and most critical phase in the development of custom software. During this phase, we take an in-depth look at your current business processes and how we can address problems or bottlenecks with a custom built solution. This phase is absolutely critical to the current and future success of the software; without it we are building a house without a blueprint. The only way to validate the success of a custom software endeavour is to understand what needs to be delivered. Thus, without understanding the requirements, we can never hope to deliver a successful system that our clients would be happy with.
Just want to welcome everyone to the new Deversus Blog. We’ll be covering many different topics over the next while, ranging from why a custom solution may be right for you, to the latest and greatest tech news. Check back soon for our first (real) article!
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