I’m *not* referring to software companies.
Instead, I’m talking about what ordinary firms write internally for their own management. Healthsouth. AT&T. Ford. U.S. Steel. Wal-Mart. Embassy Suites. Boeing. Cracker Barrel. DuPont. McDonald’s. Acme Brick. AIG.
Every company in America writes unique software programs that are run inside those firms. That’s called “proprietary software.”
It’ll manage their operations, investments, communications. It will analyze their competition and track their customers.
You don’t buy that software inside Circuit City; you write it yourself.
There’s a Trillion Dollars or more of proprietary business software in use by U.S. companies.
Well, National Cement isn’t going to go rewrite their mixing and shipping software just because MicroSoft changed in Vista what worked in XP. See: “backwards compatibility.”
Nor are those companies going to upgrade hardware just because some wet-behind-the-ears kid thinks that it’s outdated.
Corporate America isn’t going to pay new money for old functionality. That means that new software has to do something new, rather than just rewriting the old software to give the same functionality on a new OS.
I’m fully aware of what you are talking about. I once worked on a project that cost $100 million for junk that could have been handled by off the shelf software. When we got the software it so convoluted and user unfriendly I wanted to smack the developers upside the head because what we insisted on was user friendly software. And we got the opposite.
I don’t know precisely what you use but I’ll bet there is commercial software available that could handle your needs. You need not reinvent the wheel unless you like wasting money.