Application Development Outsourcing

Weary Cincinnati/Dayton IT job seekers hope it’s true. Politicians declare that it should be true. Parents of young graduates with Computer Science degrees need it to be true. So is it? Are businesses beginning to backsource (bring IT services that they had offshored back to the U.S.) in significant ways? What about outsourced jobs? Are those moving back in-house?

This month, STAR BASE invites you to help us answer these outsourcing and backsourcing questions by participating in our 2011 Pulse Survey. This brief and confidential survey will go a long way in helping us all better understand the outsourcing/offshoring strategies businesses like yours are embracing today.

And, if you are motivated by swag the way I am, here’s another reason to take our survey. All participants are entered into a drawing for a Powermat wireless charging station. So take a moment, take the survey and share your backsourcing story with STAR BASE.

My esteemed colleague, Kupe Kupersmith, wrote an article for BA Times last week stating that “Agile is a Fad”. Now I know that will get a few of my other friends’ up in arms ready to defend their approach to IT project work. I can see the smoke coming out of their ears now. However, if you read Kupe’s article he says that “the word agile is a fad, the agile movement is definitely a trend.” I think it is safe to say that Agile is the hottest trend in IT project work these days. Many companies have switched over to Agile over these past few years and many more companies are considering the move. It has prompted many training courses by education providers. So let’s take a deep, hard look at the Agile “movement” and see if it is a fad, or is it here to stay? Is Agile really any better than Waterfall? What is the next best thing that will come down the pike?

Agile came upon the IT application development and software requirements arenas like a wave, gaining support as it moved. As education providers developed courses to teach IT application development teams to “go agile”, it gained momentum. All this happened in these past few years in very much Fad style. A fad starts very abruptly and gains momentum as it moves, forceful and overpowering; like a wave. Will Agile be here with the wave reverses course and heads back out to sea? This is where the fad loses its zest, when people realize that this is no better than what we had before, or it is swept over by the bigger and stronger wave of the next best fad to come down the pike. The wave reverses course and heads back out to see and disappears as fast as it appeared.  

Is Agile better than what we had before (Waterfall)? I won’t even go there because depending on who you ask, you will get a different answer. You could ask 100 people and probably get somewhere near 50 yes’ and 50 no’s.   That is built quite a bit on personal opinion. The one thing I notice with Agile as it is used today is that it is misapplied by many companies. They talk agile and think that they are using agile, but in reality they have adopted some of the components of agile, such as sprints, scrums and the daily stand-up meeting, but they miss the boat on delivering a piece of working software at the end of each sprint. When your five minute daily stand-up meeting becomes 15 or 20 minutes, all you really have accomplished is keeping your application development team from doing actual work. There are other places that say they are agile, but their sprint is six months long. According to the principles of Agile a sprint should be a couple of weeks to a couple of months long, with a preference to shorter timescale. So a six month sprint is not agile.

The biggest downfall to the Agile principles that I have seen in my experience is the need for comprehensive engagement of the Product Owner. In my experience, Business managers have a business to run and helping IT develop software is not in their job description, they don’t want to talk to the geeks. However, the smart Business managers know that if you don’t talk to the geeks, hard telling what you are going to get out of them. They need more direction than one sit down meeting saying “here is what I need”; and we will not go into the language barrier. If you can’t make IT understand what problem you are trying to solve, then you probably will not get the best IT business solution out of them.

So, is Agile just a Fad? Through all its misapplications and shortcomings, I don’t see agile going away anytime soon. It will not whisk away with the outgoing tide. Is Agile the “Be All of All”? There are some things that you just cannot develop with an agile approach. Some companies have developed a hybrid of the agile and waterfall approaches, so Agile is not the answer to all of IT’s business solutions problems. What will the next great approach be that comes down the pike? My crystal ball is not working today, but it is sure to hit the IT project management world just the way Agile did a few years back. Will IT management be ready for it? Only time will tell.

Still a very timely topic of discussion, from the person who wishes to transition into a Business Analysis career who wants to know what skills they must have to be a successful BA, to the new BA who wants to know what skills they need to add to their repertoire, to the Senior BA who wants to know where to go next in their career; everyone wants to know how to improve their skills to get to that next level of their career.

Two of my colleagues take on this subject, Kupe in BA Times discusses soft skills vs. hard skills. He notes the importance of soft skills in being a successful BA. Kupe is not suggesting hard skills are not important, he notes that hard skills is what is going to get you noticed, stand out in a crowd, but it is the soft skills that will land you on that next level and keep you there. After all, nobody wants to work with a jerk.

Laura discusses whether Project Management is the next step in the career of a Senior BA at Bridging-the-Gap. She discusses how this use to be the case years ago but is no longer the only option. In fact, we now see the reverse happening where Project Management professionals transition into Business Analysis careers. For those who have reached the pinnacle of their BA career, besides Project Management, they could move into BA Management, creating a BA Office within their organization, Enterprise Analysis, Management Strategic Consulting, Business Consulting, Business Subject Matter Expert or external IT and Business Management Consulting. There are as many paths as there are people willing to forge them.

Elizabeth Larson will be taking on a similar topic at the Southwest Ohio Business Development Conference in April. She will discuss whether Business Analyst and Project Manager should be one or two roles within the organization. At this very same conference I will be presenting the topic “Improving Your BA Skills: From Self-Assessment to Self-Improvement”. This is where I will discuss the many ways you can gain new and improve current BA skills.   This is a conference not to be missed if you are in the Cincinnati area on April 29, 2011.

This topic has been around for many years and as you can see is still a very hot topic today, getting a lot of press. There is no one way to build your career, forge your own path. Remember you are in charge of your career. Unemployment, downsizing or IT outsourcing may derail your plans for a time, but don’t allow that to stop you permanently. For some general guidelines, as Kupe suggests, develop the hard skills necessary to accomplish the tasks of a BA and get you noticed. Then develop the soft skills that will land you on that next plateau of your career. Remember, that your current job is not your career, it is just your current position in your career; you decide where to go next.  Let your passions guide you. If Project Management doesn’t excite you, good; now you have other options to continue your career.

For those of you who have wondered where I have been, I am happy to say that I was in the Bahamas.  I took a long deserved vacation with the family to the Bahamas.  The cruise and the trip were excellent.  Now I come from the 80 degree sunny weather of the Bahamas and Florida to the 20 degree snowy weather of Cincinnati, it just doesn’t seem fair.  No, I was not in the Bahamas for a month or two months, but getting caught up with everything takes time.

Recently, I have been pondering the question “Has IT become irresponsive to business requests?”  As I go from organization to organization I look at the time it takes from request to solution implementation and I am dumbfounded.  For those of us who have been in application development services for awhile remember that what use to take a day now takes a week, or longer.  Yes, we have things like Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and other regulations to thank for this; but also I see that organizations themselves put so much process into their developing of IT business solutions, that the time to fill a business request gets longer and longer.  Let’s take a look back to see how this happened.

In the beginning there was chaos.  The business manager, needing a widget, made a request to the IT manager, the IT manager handed down the request to the developer, who spoke this language called “techie”.  In three days, the business manager needing his widget, went to the IT manager and asked “Hey, where is my widget?”  The IT manager replied, “I will find out for you”.  He went to the developer and asked ‘Where is the widget?”, and the developer handed him a midget.  The IT manager said “I am not sure this is what he wanted”.  The IT manager returned to the business manager with the midget.  The business manager said “That is not what I asked for, can’t you understand plain ‘biz talk’?”  He further inquired, “Why couldn’t you tell me when it would be done and stop the developer when he started building the wrong thing?”  The IT manager said “I need help!” and chaos ensued.

Then The Project Manager (PM) stood up and said I can help.  I can put together a project schedule and draw pretty pictures for you that will tell you exactly when that IT business solution will be done.  The IT manager said “I like pretty pictures, yes do that”.  So the business manager made a request to the IT manager for a fidget.  The IT manager handed down the request to the PM.  The PM made a project schedule, carefully drafted a project scope, wrote a communication plan and a risk mitigation plan and made deadlines and milestones.  He then showed all his work to the IT manager who looked at it in awe.  Then the PM handed all his work to the developer who stripped out just the parts he needed to create the widget.  In seven days, the business manager needing his fidget, went to the IT manager and asked “Hey, where is my fidget?”  The IT manager showed the business manager all that the PM created and the business manager looked at it in confusion.  The IT manager said, this says your fidget will be done in two days.  The business manager said, at least now you can tell me when it will be done, but what is taking so long?  So now they have structure to the chaos.  In two days the IT manager delivered the widget to the business manager and the business manager said “that is not a fidget, what is wrong with you?”  The IT manager said I do not understand what you want.

So the Business Analyst (BA) stood up and said I can help.  He said your application development team speaks “techie” and the business people talk “biz talk”.  I speak both languages and can translate what the business is asking for into “techie” for the development team.  The IT manager said “Yes, do that”.  So the business manager requested a zidget from the IT manager.  The IT manager handed the request down to the BA and the PM.  The BA went and talked to the business manager and said “tell me about this zidget you want”.  He made long lists of requirements and definitions of what a zidget is.  Meanwhile, the PM made his project schedule, full of scope, plans and drawings.  The BA went to the PM and handed him all the requirements and said this is what the business means by a zidget.  The PM handed all that the BA and the PM had created to the developer who stripped out just the parts he needed to create this zydget.  In ten days, the business manager needing his zidget, went to the IT manager and asked “Where is my zidget?”  The IT manager showed the business manager all that the PM and BA had created, who looked at it in great confusion, and stated “Is that what I asked for?”  The IT manager said “Yes it is, and it will be ready in two days”.  The developer showed the finished zydget to the BA, who stated “this is not quite right, make a little change here”.  So the developer did as the BA said.  In two days the IT manager delivered the zidget to the business manager, who declared “Look you got it right!”

The above story does not really account for the time and effort that Quality Control and Production Change Control put into the process.  So it is easy to see why a day has become a week, or longer; and make it appear as if IT has become irresponsive to business requests.  However, in most organizations the above is the normal process, we call project life cycle (PLC), to get an enterprise application development change made.   Most organizations have emergency procedures that circumvent the normal procedures to get a change made quickly.  More and more I see those emergency procedures being used.  What does this cause, new production change control processes and validation, which usually translates into more people.  So what can be done to improve this process?  Go back to Chaos?
 

The big news out of JavaOne this year was that JavaFX script was not going to be used in the next version of JavaFX, but rather baked into the Java APIs. For application development people, this means that you can just use JavaFX directly in your project, without a separate compiler. I am guessing that this will make data binding easier, and help the adoption rate of Swing application development people. JavaFX 2.0 probably won't be out until next summer. For those of you that already have used and enjoyed JavaFX Script, fear not. The code has been forked and been given a new name: Visage. What's interesting with Visage is that the mission is not only to keep the language alive, but to fix the issues and make it a first class language. Discussions on Visage are going on right now. If you ever wanted to get in on the ground floor of a language, now is definitely the time. Your suggestions and efforts can directly shape a language! I hope to see you on the discussion boards.

This month I have been exploring the IT and Business working relationship.  It is a hot topic these days getting a lot of press.  STAR BASE Consulting is conducting a pulse survey asking what is the relationship like in your organization.  BA Times notes that your “Customers Don’t Want to Work with You!”  A couple of weeks ago, I looked at the relationship and how BAs could reduce the rivalry, if there is one.  Last week I took the relationship to the Organizational level and described how the Organization can build a unified, collaborative team.

You say Organizational Structure, Seating Charts, Enterprise Analysts (EA) and Business Analysts (BA) are all find and dandy, but what about me and my small IT shop?  I don’t have enough people to split into EAs and BAs.  How do you split one person?  Small-to-Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs) usually have an IT shop of 10 people or less.  Maybe at most 2 of them will be BAs.  I even had one CIO recently tell me that in his small shop he doesn’t really have full-time BAs, but five Programmer/Analysts that do their own analysis.  So we will assume these are the hybrid Developer/Business Analyst role within the organization.  So in this kind of structure, how can we improve the IT and Business working relationship?

In SMBs, where resources are scarce, it is not uncommon for people to perform multiple roles or “wear many hats” within the organization.  In today’s economy, where IT spending and salaries have stalled but the workload has not: IT is getting even more squeezed.  In this situation, when the SMB cannot make one of its BAs the strategic role (EA), or perhaps the organization does not need full-time enterprise analysis activities going on, it becomes even more crucial for the BAs to assist in building a unified, collaborative working relationship between IT and the business.  So let’s look at some of the key points I have discussed in the past two weeks.

Seating Chart - Two Desks

When looking at this seating chart you realize that there is only one person, so you only need one desk, correct?  Allowing the BA to have a desk in the IT Department and one in the business unit of the organization allows them to build a working relationship with each team.  By spending part of the day or week with each team, the BA can understand the challenges each team faces.  Even if the BA can spend only part of his/her time sitting with the business unit that they are suppose to support, it helps build awareness of the daily challenges that the business people face on a daily bases.  This helps the BA identify business needs to improve business processes and make the business run smoother.  This also makes the BA approachable by the business people to assist to work on problems and will help get buy-in from the business people when the BA has analysis tasks that require business input.

Communication is Key

Communication is a key skill for a BA, but becomes even more important in this situation.  The trap that the BA must avoid is the business feeling that the BA is approachable only when he/she is sitting at the desk in the business area.  Or that the BA is available for IT project work only when he/she is sitting at the desk with the IT business solutions development team.  The BA must communicate to both teams that he/she is available whenever they need assistance; it is their goal to assist.  The BA also must represent the needs, desires and limitations of each team to the other.  Make the IT application development team understand the business requirements and why these requirements are needed.  Make the business understand the time involved to make “a simple change” to an enterprise application.  By representing each team to the other, and making each understand the work at hand, whether that is requirements or solution testing, they are creating a shared vision across the organization.

Build the Bridge

Through effective communication of the needs and limitations of one team of the business to the other and representing the each team to the other the BA can build a bridge of understanding between the two groups.  By making each side realize that we are all in this together and desire the same outcome, you can build a relationship of trust and get rid of the “Us vs. Them” scenario and replace it with a collaborative working relationship that brings about better IT solutions to business needs.

Whether in a large organization or SMB, business must go to IT for technology solutions.  Even in an IT Outsourcing situation, there are on-site IT people to directly talk with the business people.  In SMBs, where resources are less and people “wear many hats”, the BA role of liaison becomes more important to overall IT business solutions success.
 

I am now in my second stint as a performance architect. There are many tools to measure performance. Usually there is some criteria like time or memory that is failing. I think most application development people know that the secret to good performance is good code. The problem is that good code is impossible to measure. There isn’t any metric you can show your boss that shows refactoring this class will make the code run faster, or at least will not remove that class from the performance list. Besides we have these new features that need to be added. So how do I make code perform at a high level?
Write unit tests. Make sure that the tests cover all of your method calls. Make sure that your test captures error situations, not just the "happy path". Write your test cases BEFORE you write your code so you can "code to the test". Of course, you need good use cases from your architect and business analyst to write the unit tests.
Comment your code. Make sure your method names describe the function it is performing. Most IDEs add the parameters and returns for you; all you have to do is describe the reason for the method. These are easy things to do. They are boring yes, but when it comes to adding that new feature, or changing a method call, it saves a lot of time when you can run a test to prove that your changes work.
Refactoring. All application development people should learn refactoring. The Java language has changed tremendously in the last 15 years, and your code hasn’t. I think that the Date object has been revamped twice since the 1.x days. New features like annotations and generics may not change the performance of the code, but it sure does affect the readability of the code. Readable, easy to understand code is also easy to maintain and update. It makes a six month project become a three month project. The business always has more projects, so they will be happy. Fewer errors happen, so your boss is happy. You get to solve more interesting problems so you are happy. When you are happy, both you and your code performs better.

• To Communicate to all audiences
• To Validate that Needs are Met
• To Ensure Everything’s within in Scope
• To Manage Changes to Requirements
• To Meet Regulatory and Corporate Obligations
• To Define Requirements Collaboratively

I don't often get on my soapbox, but I feel it's time for this. Stop whining! This refers specifically to application development, but I guess it can be applied to most everything. The point I am talking about is application frameworks.
I am using JavaFX, which is relatively new. The problem it is trying to solve is to remove the cruft from desktop application development (Swing), add 2d animations, and be able to run on a variety of devices and platforms. For me the holy grail of Java development would be to create an application that runs on mobile, desktop, and browser, all using the same code! JavaFX does this nicely. Some application development people won't even look at it because features like menus are not there yet. Are there some things missing? Yes, but there is a difference between “where's function X?” and “Epic fail! I can't do anything because function X is missing!”.
All languages, especially new ones have holes in them. You must learn to work around things, that's why I call myself a hacker. Would I want to have something work out of the box? Of course I would, but I also understand that knowledge comes with getting your hands dirty. Just because I can't drag and drop a control doesn't mean it doesn't work. I think the rule of thumb for me is, if the work takes more code than the application I am working on, then's it's broken. I think the whining is more apparent in the younger guys, because of the great things we can do in our IDEs. Not to sound like a greybeard (but I will anyway) is that I started coding Java in NOTEPAD! The same is true with HTML and XML. I love that code completion and other useful features have become standard now, but I bring this point up for a reason. I know how to fix it when breaks, because I know how it's put together.
Sure code is tough, but if you think writing an application is tough, you should see what it takes to write an API. The application development “magic” doesn't write itself. If something doesn't work right, investigate it, instead of complaining. You may have the key fix to make it great. I know you will learn something during your research. You can't drag that control, so you will wait until it's so easy, even a caveman can do it. If you do, you may be replaced by a cheaper caveman.

I have recently discussed my application development with JavaFX. After using it for a while, I am generally impressed. I come from a Swing background, so desktop application development is not difficult. The concepts that you will most use are sequences, binding, and triggers. Sequences are arrays of objects, but JavaFX makes it easier to use. You can use an index of course, but the insert and delete keywords give more control. You can simply add to the end of the sequence, or insert or delete before or after any item in the sequence. The hardest thing to deal with is that there are no multi-level arrays in JavaFX.

Bind and triggers are an interesting way to dynamically update values on the screen. They seemed awkward to me first, but once you get the hang of it, they work well. You can use the bind keyword assign a variable or attribute a dynamic value. There are times though that the runtime won't update. Instead of Listeners, JavaFX uses the on replace keyword to change the value in runtime. Anything inside the brackets will fire when the value changes. Just update the bound variable in the on replace, and the runtime will update. It seems like you are creating the same value twice, but it is a better way to control runtime events, without a bunch of unused Listeners taking up space.

For most application development people, it is the ability to customize and extend controls that makes a language useful. One thing that I have been doing is creating custom groups. Each control, (Text, buttons, progress Bar, etc) are actually a node on a scene. You can use the Group container to combine the controls into a single class. The Group control is more than a container because application development people can add special attributes that affect the group. I have created a group of polygons that act as buttons. I can't use the ButtonGroup control, so I change the selected button and hover color inside the class by using attributes. The cool thing though, is that I don't create the mouse events in the class, but when I create the group. The mouse events interact with variable on my main class, so there isn't any coupling of my custom class to my main class. That means I can use my polygon buttons in any project I wish.

The are many different effects that you can apply to the controls, too many in fact. As most application development folk don't have a solid background in graphics, a solid guide on gradients, reflection, glowing and other effects, and animation would be great. I just don't know how to control some effects, and I am still learning how to blend effects to make things look cool. That tutorial or book would be my new best friend.

“IT executives increasingly implement marketing initiatives to improve the communications with their business customers. But these efforts often focus solely on the brand aspects of the services under the IT’s control without understanding the business’ perception of IT. To maximize the success, IT must add business satisfaction assessments to its tool kit. Understanding business satisfaction requires qualitative and quantitative data that capture customer expectations and perceptions through different types of interactions such as interviews, panels, focus groups, complaint systems, and surveys. This report provides best-practice recommendations, survey templates, and questions to guide IT executives through the deployment of a business satisfaction assessment. It applies Forrester’s deep expertise in external customer satisfaction to the interface between business customers and their internal IT suppliers.” says a new Forrester report.

I have served on countless business application development teams within several organizations in the Southwest Ohio and Cincinnati Information Technology community, one thing I can say is that most IT organizations do not gauge business satisfaction with IT business solutions.  I have served in only a couple of organizations where the business serves on the IT governance committee.  An organization does not have to be “big” to have an IT governance committee.  No matter what the size of the organization decisions are made as to priorities in IT work.  IT governance does not have to be a long drawn out process or take great time commitment from the business or IT executives, but business involvement in IT governance goes a long way in gaining business buy-in as you roll out the IT business solutions to the business.

Involvement in IT governance is just one way that many organizations in the Greater Cincinnati area can improve the IT-business relationship.  The Forrester report goes into ways to solicit and gauge business satisfaction with IT business solutions.  Doing so should affect decisions concerning not only IT business solution delivery but also IT Infrastructure and IT outsourcing initiatives.

 

I recently read an article about the state of the IBM “i” and the amount of complaining by IBM application development and business partner folk. I know several RPG application development folk, and it sounds familiar. That made me think about my Java Application development and career. Are there things to complain about, and uncertainty about the future? Yes, but there are 2 reasons why the Java community is in a better place; the business model and the community. Before the IBMers call for a holy war, I said COMMUNITY! I am not talking about the strengths or weaknesses of the hardware or software. The business model for IBM is that they make the hardware and software, and partner for the sales and service. I think that is a viable model until IBM competes in the sales and services with their partners. If a lead is brought in by a small partner, they are awarded by giving the business to someone bigger. This sets up a confrontational relationship between IBM, the big partners, and the little partners. IBM can also decide whether or not you are worthy to be a partner. Why does this affect the software application development team? Because most consulting firm are selling SERVICES not HARDWARE. If they are not seeing business because of political fighting, they don't have to sell it. There are viable options on other platforms, where interference does not happen. IBM never fostered a community, they created a hierarchy with themselves as the head.

Certainly Sun has done some things that made myself and others unhappy. Besides, complaining, we actively pushed to remove barriers in our path. We do have an open source Java. Is there a IBM community that can work with RPG to make it work for them? I also think its about scale and timing. It's not like IBM software developers have their own AS/400 at their home. It's easy for me to create and use nearly any kind of application at my home in Cincinnati, and pretty cheaply. It makes it fun to tell non-technical people about my application development. Nobody but accountants want to hear about accounting programs. Java, and newer languages have grown up with the Internet. I have friends from all over the globe that have similar interests. If I have a problem, I can go online to a forum, friend, or web page to find what I need. I can read and write blogs to voice my opinion (like now). These things are not ingrained in the Legacy community, and in fact, have been actively campaigned against. It is my belief that any software, hardware, or service will die when there is no vocal community to support it.

As a consultant and application development person, I have to learn new things all the time. Take for example, my work with JavaFX. The language does have some familiar aspects, but there is a lot new there too. How do you go about learning something new? I have come up with some guidelines that I use in learning new things (in this case a language):

• Read as much about it as you can first. No one wants to wade through tomes of technical information, but that is where you learn. I try to get a feel for what problem the new thing is trying to solve first.
• Understand the core elements. Whether it's a programming language, a car, or a philosophical construct, knowing how it works is the first step. I know it's time to go to the next step when I have some ideas on how to use the item, and I start formulating a project.
• Examine and breakdown examples, if you can. You would be surprised at how many application development people think they're “smart enough” to figure out how things work just by following a few examples. I don't know about you, but I don't figure out a complex things just from a few simple “Hello World” examples. That being said, seeing how things works is the quickest to way get a basic understanding. Couple that with knowledge you acquired by reading the manual, and you get the “why” of how it's put together.
• Create your own knowledge base. I like to Google more than most people, but things do need to get done. I will create a separate folder to contain links to examples, other application development team members' blogs, white papers and other documentation. If you can, create a “how-to” WIKI. Having a centrally located repository makes it simple to answer questions.
• Create a test project. I do this especially for languages. I create a test project where I can test specific “how do I?” questions. It keeps you from removing code, adding unnecessary functions, and commenting and uncommenting code in your main project. Figure it out in its own project first, then transfer the code and knowledge to your main project. It is always good to revisit it after a period inactivity.
• Write or teach what you learned. As application development people, we tend to get blinders on when doing something. Having a different set eyes, or different questions being asked makes you examine what you actually know.

   

So there's my “Secret Sauce” for learning. You still have to come up with ideas on how to utilize you knowledge though.

People outside of Cincinnati may be shocked to know that I work with languages OUTSIDE of Java! I don't know any application development person, especially one who does web application development who doesn't use several languages. I have recently been working on Magento. What is that you say? Magento is an Open Source PHP ECommerce application based on the Zend Framework. You don't need to download Zend, just the Magento PHP files. We actually have Magento internally setup with a LAMP package, but I already have MySQL and Apache on my local machine, so I thought I'd tackle and individual install. The verdict? Well after a couple of small hiccups (don't use the Windows install for PHP, just unzip, and localhost needs to be a virtual host), setup was a breeze!  Fortunately, STAR BASE, Inc. has enough experience to over come these issues.  Magento is easy to customize products and catalogs, and would be a good choice for organizations to create their own ECommerce site. Magento is easy enough to implement without an IT Consultant, but an experienced consultant can save you time and frustration.