Advantages of using Components

Faster Time to Market

Components yield several advantages, perhaps their main benefit lies in faster application development, which, in turn, takes a product to market faster and at a lower cost. Instead of having to research, write and test code, developers can buy pre-built components that have been written by experts in the field.

Java or .NET based components, for example, can help an organization save an estimated 80 to 90 percent on development time by buying ready-made components. This obviates the need for company developers to spend time developing generic functionality. The development team can then concentrate their efforts on adding features that will differentiate their solution for competitive advantage.

Domain Expertise Encapsulation

In addition to speeding time to market, software components enable the leveraging of third party business and technical expertise. A component will generally work like a black box and offer a well defined piece of technical functionality through a well defined interface. In order to integrate a given component a developer will only need to understand the interface and the meaning of the results which the component produces. It is not necessary for the developer to understand the internal workings of a component and in most case an understanding of these details will not assist the developer to obtain there business objectives.

For example, say a software development project requires an engine to solve certain multi-dimensional optimization problems. In order, to develop such an engine in-house will take many man months and require team members with a solid understanding of advanced topic of mathematics. Such pieces of technical functionality are in most case orthogonal to your business objects and used as a "means to an end". In such cases the rational for buying as opposed to building is clear. Through buying such a component you will achieve significant cost savings and free up your development team to concentrate on issues which enhance your business proposition.

Measuring Return on Investment (ROI)

ROI can be measured with precise technical metrics, one of which is function-point analysis. This measures how quickly functionality can be placed into an application, for example, as function points to dollars spent, or function points to man-hours of development. Therefore, the architect can make precise calculations on ROI by quantifying the developer man hours required to develop a piece of functionality inhouse rather than buying an off-the-shelf component.

At WebCab, our pricing framework is designed in such a way as to provide our customer base with at least a x10 return on investment. This means that even if you use only 10% of the functionality which a component provides you will still achieve a positive return on investment at the point of purchase over developing the same functionality inhouse.