Software developers… meet computer engineers
Software is intimately tied to the computers that run it.
As the guy who writes most of the code, and the guy who pays for and builds all the computers at TrailsWeb, I appreciate the interplay between software and hardware. To achieve truly large scale results while taking it easy on the budget, every major software project should be designed starting with the silicon.
Anyone in the IT field knows that resources cost money, a lot of money. Bandwidth for corporations is exponentially more expensive than home DSL. Server platforms have similarly exorbitant licensing fees. One day at TrailsWeb we listed off the different words that triple the cost of anything. Labels like "professional", "enterprise", "business" and "corporate" are often the hallmark of an extra set of exorbitantly priced features that are only needed by businesses. Buying equipment and software for commercial use is a big deal, or at least it should be.
Creating an efficient system and providing access to that system so people can do their work is at the core of any major software undertaking. Security is an essential component of the system. Performance is also critical. No one wants to pay for 100 people to use a system that runs half as fast as it could. At the same time, running everything at 2% of capacity and paying for licenses on three times as many computers as is needed is extremely wasteful as well.
You might need five servers to host a website with high SSL overhead with one network card, while paying an extra $200 to get network cards which take over the SSL encryption would allow you to get the same performance with two servers. Even the choice in graphics card can affect how a server performs in certain scenarios. Spending $3000 on a standalone RAID controller with battery backup might be insane overkill in one high-performance scenario, and can be the difference between cripplingly slow and lightning fast in another high-performance system.
When it comes to designing a system, you need someone who is well versed in what technologies exist, the trade-offs between price and performance, and how to get the most from every bit of hardware. Our decades of experience and enthusiastic immersion in technological advancements over the years gives us powerful insight into how to help your company benefit the most from cutting-edge technologies.