Since our beginning in 1986, we've served large organizations with our leading-edge solutions designed to help people make better data-based decisions. Whether it's on PC desktops, networks, the Internet, and more recently mobile devices, we recognize you need to have the data you need, where and when you need it, in a format that helps you make decisions and avoid mistakes. We also understand the challenges of balancing application functionality with the cost and requirements of regulators, auditors, and enterprise IT.

Our general philosophy is to quickly create sophisticated solutions built on a solid database foundation. Designed to scale and expand, our solutions evolve as your business demands it. Sometimes we can anticipate future needs in our design, but more often, the application evolves based on unforeseen events such as changes in the economy, regulations, new products and customers, or competitive pressure. With our staff of experienced developers, we can quickly adapt our solutions to meet your needs. Rapid development and deployment, fail quickly and cheaply, and water and nurture the seeds that grow and justify additional investment.

We understand the needs of large organizations and deliver the quality you demand. FMS products are used by tens of thousands of customers in over 100 countries including 90 of the Fortune 100.

Learn more about our experience and services to large organizations in our new page Consulting Services and Custom Software Solutions for Large Businesses.

To find out how we can help your organization, please contact us for a Risk-Free Assessment.

The Microsoft Azure platform is now available for production use.

We've been using Azure over the past year for web/asp.net hosting and SQL Server solutions. We have been very impressed with its features and capabilties. We believe it will revolutionize how we create and deploy applications, and look forward to providing commercial and custom solutions and services with Azure.

We're already working on several projects including the merging of the Windows desktop/Microsoft Access/Office with the web. We look forward to sharing more with you in the near future.

What do you think about Azure and cloud computing?

Professor Kathy Korman Frey at the George Washington University School of Business has kicked off the 2009-2010 HotMommas Case Study Competition. It is a unique project that takes the stories of the women and makes them teachable in a "case study" format, thus providing scalable, global access to role models and virtual mentors. You may recall us mentioning our work on this project not long ago.

If you want to nominate someone (yourself included) for the 2009-2010 competition, go to the HotMommas Facebook page or send an email with their information.

Links

The HotMommas Project

Nomination Form

Why Role Models Matter for Women and Girls

Hot Mommas Project Everyday Revolutionaties

Washington Post article

Over the past year our Professional Solutions Group has delivered some notable ASP.NET web projects, including The HotMommas Project, a case study competition website for women entrepreneurs that has received a lot of press, and a competency and courseware management system for the DoD's Defense Acquisition University. 

We encourage you to read more about our ASP.NET web development services. If you need a quality website, we have an experienced group of business consultants, web developers and database experts that would love to help. Please contact us for a free assessment of your organization's requirements.

The HotMommas Project and Professor Kathy Korman Frey are featured in a recent Washington Post article. It is about the GWU Women's Entrepreneurial Leadership Class, the Hot Mommas Project (as mentioned previously on our blog), and all the reasons why these educational initiatives exist.

Today, April 13th, 2009, at 12pm EST you can participate in a related online chat at the Washington Post's website. Professor Frey will be there to answer questions and lead the discussion.

Luke and I attended the awards ceremony for The HotMommas Project Case Study Competition March 9th, 2009 at The George Washington University. It was great to see the result of our efforts developing the HotMommas website over the past several months. It's quickly become the world's largest, public domain case study repository of stories from female entrepreneurs.  It was wonderful to hear the stories of some of the contestants. We met some dynamic, brave and inspiring women entrepreneurs. The winner's case is well worth reading, and so are many others. We encourage you to check out The HotMommas Project website.

One of the most powerful ways to increase productivity is automating the distribution of personalized data to your contacts. Whether they are customers, prospects, or internal people, simplifying communications is a wonderful result of all your efforts collecting and analyzing data. With our Total Access Emailer program, we are helping thousands of people leverage the power of emails and their Microsoft Access data.  Easily send HTML emails with references to your data fields to personalize each message.  You can even add filtered data from a table or query, or email Microsoft Access reports either as attachments or as your HTML email.  Total Access Emailer makes it easy to do on a one time basis or continuously. It runs as an Access add-in with a Wizard interface, and also has a programmatic interface with runtime library to launch emails from VBA code.

Recently, we've helped several organizations create Access applications where email was a critical part of the solution. For Harvard College, we developed a system to manage the assignment of interviewers and candidates. An Access database on SQL Server is used by an administrator to match the two parties, then an email sent out to the interviewer. The Interviewer then visits an ASP.NET web site to record whether they accepted or declined the assignment, and upload their results. Reminders are automatically sent if no response is received by a certain time. It's running hot and heavy now as interviewing season comes to a close for this year's applicants. 

Similarly, we created a solution for a national firm in the customer loyalty business to improve their partners' communications with the customers they've signed up. The main application is a web based ASP.NET and SQL Server solution, but we decided to build the communications part in Access. This separated it from the transactional load on the web site and simplified its development. The marketing people could design their emails in HTML and use Total Access Emailer to replace the fields in the message with the data downloaded from SQL Server. After tweaking their message, previewing sample emails, and getting it perfect, they could launch the blast on their own. The result was a personalized email to each participant with a custom letterhead with graphics for each affinity partner as if the message came directly from them. We've created monthly statements, a campaign for Toys for Tots, and other notifications to drive build a closer relationship between the partners and their customers.

So if you want to send emails from database, learn more about Total Access Emailer.  A free 30 day trial version to send emails from Access is available. If you'd like us to help you create a custom solution in Access or .NET with email, please contact our Professional Solutions Group.

FMS has offered Access to SQL Server "upsizing" (aka conversion or migration) services for a number of years. We have been working with Microsoft to help customers convert their database applications from Access-based systems to (most typically) SQL Server and ASP.NET websites and web applications. We are one of the few companies in the world who are recognized by Microsoft as being experts at Access to SQL Server migration (see our whitepaper and partner link at the bottom of that page on the Microsoft website).

To kick off 2009, we are offering special rates on these services. Please contact us or give us a call at 703-356-4700 to find out how we can help your organization take the next step.

FMS is excited to announce the launch of The HotMommas Project, a case study competition and social networking website for businesswomen and entrepreneurs. FMS developed this Microsoft ASP.NET and SQL Server based website for a GWU business school professor in Washington, DC. The HotMommas Project just announced their judging panel and the group is generating quite a buzz. Check it out, and we encourage you to tell anyone who may be interested to sign up and enter the competition.