About Us

Industry Experience

For the past seven years, the Power Consultants Incorporated (PCI has been providing software development expertise to the Image Collection/Image Sales department of the National Geographic Society. Over the course of this time, the PCI has designed, developed and implemented two enterprise level systems to assist the Society in managing their growing collection of over 600,000 images.

The first system was a Windows based application (IRMA) that was created as part of the Society's Y2K initiative to move off an aging mainframe. The system allowed the society to store the inventory of images, search the inventory, check out/charge in images to internal/external customers, store photographer information, product information, etc. This system did not manage digital scans, image cataloging, and sales transactions.

The second and most recent application is a browser based digital asset management system (SPI). This application is an extension of the IRMA windows based system providing the same robust functionality, but also providing digital images, thesaurus, cataloging, sales, circulation, invoicing and business reporting. This system was the final step in consolidating three disparate systems into one and enables catalogers, researchers, and sales people to use the same data repository, ensuring that everyone is seeing and using the most recent data. This system also implements an export manager, providing an automated method of moving data to NGS's E-commerce system, doing away with the cumbersome manual process.

Company Description

Power Consultants Incorporated (PCI), founded in 1995, is a leading business software solution provider delivering custom product development, technical staffing, and training.  PCI specializes in design, development and successful implementation of solutions requiring the latest information technologies, such as Internet/Intranet B2B and B2C e-commerce solutions, distributed applications, client/server applications and database creation and optimization.  To maximize the ability to maintain our competitive advantage, PCI offers leading technology education, both internal and external to staff and clients, as well as providing unparalleled customer support after the application has been delivered.  In 2001, PCI qualified as a General Services Administration IT Schedule holder (GSA FSS Information Technology Equipment, Software, and Services Schedule FSC Group 70 contract GS-35F-0286M), positioning it to sell software-consulting products and services to the United States Government.  As leading companies continue to rely on new technologies to maintain their market share, PCI has positioned itself as a firm that can deliver winning solutions quickly and provide superior software consulting services.

Methodologies & Software Engineering

PCI's primary goal is to provide quality, enterprise wide, custom software solutions to our clients. To achieve this goal, PCI implements structured methodologies and software engineering approach for design, development, maintenance, testing and implementation of its custom solutions. Methodologies include step-by-step processes for both object oriented (iterative and recursive) and traditional waterfall development approaches. Client/Server and legacy migration is also covered under systematic approach to development. Structured methodologies include detailed planning, synchronizing resources (both human & time) with phased deliveries, matching design and code deliveries of dependent modular pieces with final integration, efficient source code control & configuration, parallel testing and final integration, client acceptance testing. Many of these tasks are achieved through the use of CASE tools, project management tools, source code control & configuration software packages, automatic testing tools, and detailed planning.  PCI's structured software engineering practices offer the distinct advantages of managing:

·         Better process

·         Support for reuse

·         Quality focus

·         Extensions and modifications projects

·         Flexible architecture

·         Integrated metrics support

·         Management of complexity

Technologies

Internet / Intranet / E-commerce / Web applications

·         Java applications, Scripts, applets, servlets

·         Enabling existing applications to Web/Internet/Intranet

·         HTML, DHTML, SGML, XML, JSP, VB, ASP, Cold Fusion programming

·         Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, PostgreSql, MySQL, MS Access, etc.

·         WebLogic, Tomcat, ColdFusion, WebSphere

·         Apache, Microsoft IIS

Web integration with existing applications & databases

·         Back-end integration of Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, PostgreSql, MySQL, MS Access, Informix, Sybase, etc. to web (JDBC, ODBC)

·         Integrating tools and other applications to web

Java related development

·         Applications development in Java (Sun, IBM, Java Swing, JDK, Beans, EJB, etc.)

·         Building multi-tiered distributed systems, scaleable, transactional, persistent, distributed components - deployable across different operating systems, databases, application servers

·         Java business applications

·         Java for embedded and real-time systems

·         Java middleware tools

·         Rapid system prototyping ("proof of concept")

·         Java foundation classes (JFC, AWT)

·         Java security (JDK)

·         Converting existing applications to Java