Remember Data Systems

Business Challenge

Remember Data Systems licenses a turnkey software solution for credit unions. They determined that it was time to replace their existing product, a client/server system written on the Wintel and Dec Alpha platforms, with a new browser based system. This new system would be written under Microsoft .NET, allowing access both within the credit union enterprise as well as over the Internet. This ambitious goal left them in a situation where they needed to simultaneously prove the viability of .NET for their product; create and validate a design; re-train their team in a new technology; and develop new processes and infrastructure appropriate for the .NET technology.

The Engagement

To jumpstart their development efforts, Remember brought in Biff Gaut for a three month engagement to act as Chief Technical Architect during the initial phases of the project. Biff worked with the team to develop a high level design and develop a prototype that proved the viability of the design in a production environment, acting as a mentor to the team in .NET in the process. Once the design was assured, the team turned to creating the infrastructure and processes required to ensure a successful development project. With experience in a large number of development projects, Biff was able to help the team identify these needs and then organize and lead the team members in the resulting tasks.

Results

At the conclusion of the engagement, Remember had a high-level design for their system and a prototype that validated this high level system. There were plans in place for configuration management and testing, as well as infrastructure that defined the team's approach to such functionality as security and system management. The functional prototype not only served as a example of the high-level design, but also provided a complete test bed system to utilize the new error reporting, security and other features. Remember went from square one in their .NET development effort to a confident team with several small successes in their background and a shared vision of the future of the project.

Client's View

Remember retained Ken Roe of their sister company, inception, LLC, to act as project manager for the kickoff of the .NET development project. Mr. Roe had the following evaluation of Biff's value to the project:

Nasdaq Stock Market

Business Challenge

Nasdaq Market Watch is tasked by the SEC with monitoring activity on the Nasdaq Stock Market. To aid them in their task, they required Surveillance Delivery Realtime (SDR), a system that monitored the data feeds at the heart of the Market. A system to monitor this volume of data has tremendous throughput requirements, requiring the tracking and analysis of up to 2000 messages every second.

The Engagement

Biff Gaut was Plural's technical manager for the development of SDR, leading a team of 35 Plural (then Micro Modeling Associates) employees. The task involved coordinating development between groups in 2 cities, New York and Washington; mentoring developers; making design decisions and ensuring the quality of the development.

Results

The SDR system was completed on time and under budget, successfully meeting stringent development requirements. The completed solution was a significant enough milestone in proving Windows suitability to the enterprise that Microsoft published a whitepaper describing the system on its web site.