What happens when  you hire the biggest name brand consulting firm to develop your mission critical software?  Chances are, you end up paying ‘name brand’ fees – and getting software that doesn’t work as expected.

A recent $57 million project that IBM Consulting developed for Austin Energy, has customers getting bills that are 100 times the amount. A $1000 customer – ends up getting a $100,000 bill.

That may sound horrible to you – and from a consumer’s viewpoint, it is. From a purely technical standpoint, it is beyond horrible. It is simply incomprehensible. Here’s why:

There are several (I mean SEVERAL) stages in the software development process where something like this would get caught (often, there may be more than the three stages listed below).

  1. Unit Testing – At the very first development stage – where a developer would write a unit test to verify that this is working as expected.
  2. QA Testing – Next – at the Quality Assurance Testing phase – where a professional tester (technical) verifies that the feature is working as expected.
  3. User Acceptance Testing – And finally, there is a ‘User Acceptance’ testing phase-  where a group of actual users (non-technical, business users) get to test drive the application to ensure that everything is working as expected.

The fact that this particular glitch propagated through all these stages is beyond my comprehension. To have the world’s leading consulting company be at the helm of such a project, makes it all the more tragic. It is almost as if you ordered a custom built Lamborghini – paid a gazillion bucks – and had the wheels fly off the first time you drove it.

This is exactly the reason we started ANUJ Technologies – as an alternative to the IBMs and the Accentures of the world. Not to say that they are not good at their job – its just that we are better. And more cost effective. Eliminating all the overheads that are part of the regular consulting model, ANUJ Technologies is a company founded by – and managed by – technical professionals.

We typically cut down the development timeline and the cost of a project by at least 6 weeks – if not more. More importantly, all our software exits the door fully tested. That is just how we run things.

The next time you have an upcoming need for a project in the Retail Energy, Oil and Gas or Financial Services Industry, make sure you speak with us. It might be the best decision you make for your project.  

Anuj holds professional certifications in Google Cloud, AWS as well as certifications in Docker and App Performance Tools such as New Relic. He specializes in Cloud Security, Data Encryption and Container Technologies.

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Anuj Varma – who has written posts on Anuj Varma, Hands-On Technology Architect, Clean Air Activist.

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