Software Development and Integration

A leading project management methodology with its roots in software development companies, Agile is famed for its lean framework that minimises risk and maximises flexibility. Incorporating techniques such as Continuous Delivery, it provides a set of guiding principles based around regular customer feedback and responsiveness to change that ensures features with the most value are delivered first for the greatest business gains.

The significant advantages of Agile over traditional software development approaches were highlighted in the latest edition of Version One’s State of Agile report, with 71% of respondents citing accelerated software delivery as a key driver of Agile adoption, 63% reporting an improved ability to manage changing requirements, and over 50% saying it helps improve productivity.

As an award-winning customised software development company, Box UK has a proven track record of success when it comes to passing on the recognised benefits of Agile to its clients. By working in two-week sprints development plans can be continuously revised and improved, making it perfectly suited to handling constantly-evolving requirements, and through the use of Agile Box UK has helped organisations significantly speed up their time to market, eliminate waste and better meet the needs of their users. Further examples of our Agile development projects can be found on the ‘Our Work’ page.

If you want to build an ecommerce website, there are a number of options available. Off-the-shelf solutions can provide the features and functionality required to serve a multi-channel, multi-lingual and multi-currency ecommerce offering, including built-in templates that support rapid delivery. These online stores may however require additional development to implement more complex custom functionality, or to configure your solution to work with any additional integrations you may have (for example, Enterprise Resource Planning or Product Inventory Management systems).

You can also work with a bespoke software development company to create a custom ecommerce platform. A bespoke solution gives you all the flexibility you need to integrate with any existing systems, create the look and feel you want, manage your full product range, and introduce elements such as sophisticated personalisation. As these can add time and cost to your development project, it’s important to carefully review your requirements at the outset to identify the most suitable solution for you.

You may want to combine off-the-shelf and bespoke elements to create your solution, for example as part of a headless infrastructure, to support your specific needs and objectives.

We take a robust approach to ensuring the security of our software development solutions, evidenced by our ISO:27001 and Cyber Essentials plus accreditation. At the outset of every engagement, a project-specific security plan is documented, implemented and tailored to comply with the client’s specific security requirements.

Our software engineers apply the principle of least privilege as standard across environments/applications, to ensure the highest baseline security standards across all Box UK websites and applications. The risk of information corruption or loss is mitigated by providing access based on specific users and servers, and through the implementation of security controls including disc encryption, encryption in transit and secret handling.

Ongoing project risks, including security considerations, are monitored and addressed as part of our ISO 9001:2015-compliant risk management process. This helps minimise disruption to delivery by enabling potential risks to be identified at the earliest possible stage, and preventative and corrective actions employed across both parties to avoid and reduce any impact.

Box UK’s IT consultants and systems engineers have a proven ability to deliver, support and monitor large-scale technical solutions across a range of different hosting environments, with 300+ non-production virtual servers currently in use for project work.

We tailor hosting solutions to meet client-specific security, traffic, scalability and content delivery requirements, and have built fault-tolerant, secure, automated hosting that leverages physical, cloud or hybrid infrastructure as appropriate.

Cloud solutions deployed for our clients include those built in Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, and within these we’ve implemented zero downtime deployments, monitoring, security-update patching and disaster recovery, to provide a seamless service for end-users.

Our team are also skilled at supporting clients in moving to their new hosting solutions, defining bespoke cloud solutions and migration plans to ensure a smooth transition with minimal risk or downtime.

In a custom software development project, your solution will be built from the ground up to serve the specific needs of your business and your users. When working with off the shelf software, you will be choosing from and implementing pre-built systems, using existing templates and functionality to create your solution.

Both tailor-made software and off the shelf solutions offer their own range of benefits and drawbacks, as well as different situations where they may be better suited than the alternative.

For example, customised business software is tailored to your exact needs, meaning that you get the features and functionality you require and – importantly – don’t bloat your systems with unnecessary additions. It’s worth considering custom software development if your solution is particularly complex, for example requiring multiple integrations, or when you need to safeguard ownership, support levels and your long-term roadmap. Tailor-made software can also support innovation and experimentation, where existing solutions are not available.

Where you need basic functionality delivered quickly, off the shelf software can provide a convenient solution, and can also help reduce administration overheads for standard processes. These solutions also typically require less budget than a custom software system, so it’s important to consider the value your solution will deliver back into your business, and assess your options accordingly.

PHP 

JavaScript

Python

TypeScript

MySQL – an open-source, cross-platform, Relational Database Management System (RDBMS)

Microsoft SQL Server – a Windows RDBMS

SQLite – a self-contained, serverless RDBMS often used for testing purposes

MongoDB – An open-source, cross-platform, NoSQL, document-oriented database

Frameworks and libraries commonly used on projects are those designed to provide an overall structure to the codebase, often in an Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture, or to provide an Object-Relational Mapper (ORM).

Ionic – a framework and Software Development Kit (SDK) for building mobile applications with web technology, including HTML5 and Angular

WordPress – a content management system based on PHP and MySQL; as a WordPress VIP and WPEngine strategic partner, Box UK specialises in enterprise installations of WordPress

WooCommerce – a dedicated ecommerce plugin for WordPress

Drupal – an open source PHP content management framework

Symfony 6 – a PHP set of components and a web application framework for MVC applications

Laravel – a PHP MVC framework, built on top of Symfony’s components

Doctrine – a set of PHP database libraries, including an ORM and a database abstraction layer (DBAL) for cross-database development

Twig – a flexible, fast, and secure template engine for PHP

Vue.js – a progressive open-source JavaScript framework for building user interfaces

React – an open-source frontend JavaScript library for creating user interfaces

Angular – an open-source frontend JavaScript framework maintained by Google