Comments on: Custom Development is Dead! Long Live Custom Development!!

By: Joydip @outsource-software-development

Joydip @outsource-software-development — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 06:32:55 +0000

Thank you for your article .It is a very kind gesture of you to part with your wisdom ,am sure this article is going to help a number of people .But most important of all i feel people should figure out what they are interested in and then take their decision on what to do with their career.

By: mansoor

mansoor — Thu, 08 May 2008 09:47:56 +0000

ejaz asi: welcome my old friend! its nice to hear your views again after quite sometime. You are quite correct in your views on why software houses fail, however that is the tip of the iceberg only, and something which can be resolved by subsequent trainings.

the model for custom development on top of already available solutions is quite lucrative, and i believe a lot of organizations are already devleoping their products this way. One of the companies i know build only a overlapping presentation layer on top of risk management module built by a foreign company, and they’re doing pretty well so far.

There is quite a large market for website and even web application redesigns and anyone who can do this well is looking at a very rewarding career in the future.

Atif: I may not be as knowledgeable in SaaS as some of the other people here, but i’m wondering how does SaaS becomes custom development? If SaaS, something like even what CDF Snip, is not made for a single client but with a large consumer base in mind, doesn’t it become a product? Consequently, if you develop a software on the SaaS model which will be targeted to only one company, then doesn’t it become a Custom Development effort? In this scenario, you would develop, host and maintain the application till such time the contract lasts on your own premises and the client only gets the funcitonality.

As such, i believe SaaS to be a difference of delivery model rather than a difference of business model? Please corrent me if my thinking is off the mark here.

asim: very well said asim! in the end, what really matters is the access to market, which will pretty well define your model.

By: Asim Sarfraz

Asim Sarfraz — Thu, 08 May 2008 09:10:19 +0000

Both approaches have their own advantages and disadvantages, and their own rules of engagement. While off the shelf software software tends to be relatively cheap, because cost is spread over a large client base, developing customized software can be expensive with a longer cash to cash cycle, and it has greater risk because your client base is small. In addition to that off the shelf software can have a recurring revenue stream, while for custom development you have to get into some sort of a service contract with the client to ensure continuous support. However, if you go for specialized custom development satisfying niche market, it can become very rewarding with huge returns. And I agree with Atif’s comments given above. If one is going for a custom software, the best thing to do right now is to go for the SaaS model because it offsets the disadvantages and nightmares that come with custom software development, like deployment and support issues. With the cost of bandwidth going down and the speed going up, that can be the next era of custom development after the demise of disk drives, CDs, and LAN, and maybe Windows. SaaS itself has some limitations right now, but that can change over the few years.

I think in the end what matters is with the type of resources that you have, skills, specialties, and more importantly, the access to market. Both approaches can fail, if you don’t do it right, and both approaches can guarantee you rewarding returns if done correctly.

By: Atif Abdul-Rahman

Atif Abdul-Rahman — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:48:54 +0000

Well your assessment is right but in IMHO only to a limited extent. There is a growing trend back towards custom software but not in the form it was known to be but as SaaS (Software as a Service) model which allows for mass customization and runtime service orchestration. The trend is moving from programming a customization task to ‘sewing’ one by integrating processes and workflows. Such customization offerings are semi-automated to fully automated in the near future (with semantic web services), the challenges will be of hosting a set of services which cater to a target market including the design of modular services, their interoperability issues and ofcourse the hosting itself.

This is not futuristic, ive been developing such services since 2005 and am an end user of it too.
Infact many products are offering features which enables them to be able to be highyl customized via Saas.

By: Ejaz Asi

Ejaz Asi — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:08:23 +0000

The reason why software companies in Pakistan are closing up is NOT just because Custom development doesn’t work but there’re OTHER issues which have nothing to do with Custom Development which works great. Here’s my list of those areas of failure:
1- miserable professor/University who focused only on MS based approaches/languages
2- very demotivated/less competent or just plain ignorant Marketing guys who have little idea about internet world. Heck, even CEOs and software engineers don’t get it sooner.
3- no or little satisfactory collaboration and communication between design and development teams. And then did you ever hear HCI related professionals in our companies? Indians even have them.

Custom development works great for many areas and many businesses would/do need it the only thing is my software guy/team/agency doesn’t have clue how to make it work…
Heck, I believe OpenSource software don’t have solutions-for-every-problem either.

Actually I think there’s a good comeback of Custom development on top of already-available solutions (either open source or proprietary) in next few years as more businesses get sick of ready-made designs/developments and there’re signs already. The only need of the hour is that our so-called software programmer starts thinking that just because he got BS and MS degree in Software Engg. doesn’t make him the best person to evaluate, design, market and use the product he’s gonna work on.

As you can see there’re many Facebook applications requests, PHP-developers-required and more importantly the entrepreneurial stunts going on in the country right now. I predicted few years back that many then websites of businesses would be redesigned and it was very true. I personally have worked on websites and applications out of which 90% are re-designs or re-developments. Most of them were to be done from scratch and with bottom-up approach.