Bespoke software development

DublinWriter

When I started off in software some 20 years ago, my first programming job was for a small four-man company in Dublin who supplied a lot of big banks with bespoke financial software.

These days I think the same operation would have a hard time getting even a look-in as the barriers to entry for indigenous SME's in the software business are so high in terms of how formalised the vendor selection process is. More often than it's only the 'big-boys' (Accenture, Bearing Point et al) that have dedicated teams of people who work preparing RFT response documents.

I guess what I wanted to find out is is the bespoke/vertical software market still alive in Ireland in terms of small businesses producing software?

Merrion

I think another factor is that the smaller problems (which fit well with start ups) have largely been solved and freeware has raised the bar on how much you have to do before you can get any income.

In my experience things like design (esp web design) are still done by individuals and small shops but core application work is not.

stevenmu

I work for a small consultancy/development house. We've currently got ~15 people, but for most of the time I've been there we've had <10. We differ slightly from software houses that write software from the ground up in that we provide consultancy services for off-the-shelf products (mainly the Microsoft BI stack, SharePoint, BizTalk, SQL Server, Office etc), and provide custom development services to implement custom functionality and integrations in those.

We're pretty successful, we're constantly busy, we've expanded over the last few years and our customer base reads like a who's who of the finance industry (large banks and insurance providers, multinationals etc), and a couple of the big public sector organisations too.

While I don't want to give away all of our secrets, specialising in a relatively niche area has helped us a lot. Having great references from big clients is a big plus, and we're a Microsoft partner and have a great relationship with them, both of which help give prospective clients confidence in us (imho).

srsly78

I do bespoke stuff for finance as a 1 man company, business is good. It's mostly very specialised stuff I do (quant stuff, high performance graphics etc), stuff that the big boys can't do.