Specialties

Visual Studio / ASP.Net / WinForms / Microsoft .Net Framework / C#

Most of our development projects are written in the C# programming language developed by Microsoft. A very powerful and popular tool for developing with Microsoft languages is Microsoft Visual Studio. We have been using the Microsoft Visual Studio line of products since its release and regard it as an invaluable, time-saving development environment. In the word's of Microsoft, Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 comes with a range of features that enable developers to build, debug, unit test, and deploy high-quality applications on a diverse range of platforms including Windows, the Web, the Cloud, Office and SharePoint, and more.

Microsoft SQL Server

Our developers have been using Microsoft SQL Server since before Microsoft even developed it (it was originally developed by Sybase)! So, as you might expect, we all have a certain fondness for it in our hearts. As such, it often ends up being the heart of most of our applications. Microsoft offering enterprise, desktop, free and mobile editions of this software allows us to deploy an extremely powerful data management solution almost anywhere. Microsoft describes SQL Server 2008 R2 as a complete set of enterprise-ready technologies and tools that help people derive the most value from information at the lowest total-cost-of-ownership. Enjoy high levels of performance, availability, and security; employ more productive management and development tools; and deliver pervasive insight with self-service business intelligence (BI).

Microsoft.Net Compact Framework & SQL Server CE

The Microsoft .Net Compact Framework and Microsoft SQL Server CE are used in many of our mobile development projects since they have been designed from the ground up for optimal performance under the constraints of limited device resources. These technologies allow us to use the power of the Microsoft desktop development utilities and in many cases, the desktop code already written for your project and apply them to a mobile platform.

Microsoft Access and Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office is so ubiquitous it is almost taken for granted as a development environment, sometimes even being forgotten all together. That being said, we here at Samko think Microsoft Office is a great product with the possibility to solve many business problems that often end up being solved by more complex and time consuming methods. Being that we are in a very data intensive industry Microsoft Access is the super star of Microsoft Office development in our opinion. Microsoft Access is a relational database management system. Basically a great place to keep your data. Unlike many relational database systems, Microsoft Access also includes easy to use form, query and report design wizards making it possible for many database tasks to be completed by people who are not professional programmers. Samko often recommends Microsoft Access in cases where there are very few concurrent users or for application prototyping. One of the wonderful things about Microsoft Access is that the database can be upgraded to Microsoft SQL Server at a later date and your original Microsoft Access interface can still be used with very little alteration allowing for scalability without having to invest in retraining your users.

Microsoft Windows Server / Professional & Networking

Microsoft Windows Server is the cornerstone of most business networks in the United States. As such, Samko developed products are often running on a Microsoft Windows Professional or Server operating system and the Samko staff is highly skilled in configuring and maintaining networks based on Microsoft operating systems. Samko engineers can design, order and implement your business network so day to day operations can run smoothly and you can survive a disaster if one happens to strike. Additionally Samko can colocate your server, or host your application on the Samko servers which are housed in a world class data center in Troy, Michigan and can only be accessed by Samko support staff. We only allow Samko developed software to run on the Samko owned server in order to maintain the highest quality experience and up-time for our clients.

Microsoft Windows Phone 7

Microsoft Windows Phone 7 is the flagship of the Microsoft mobile strategy. This new mobile platform allows developers to leverage interface tools unavailable to mobile developers until now while maintaining the ability to use previously developed and tested code assets. Developers also have access to a host of new services provided by Microsoft, including Xbox Live, Zune, Bing, Office, SYNC as well as services provided by other organizations. Several of our previously developed mobile projects are being reviewed in preparation for an upgrade to the windows phone 7 operating system and it will be the operating system of choice for future Samko mobile development.

Windows Azure

Windows Azure, and cloud services in general, basically allow you to leverage another organizations computing resources. Several large companies offer cloud computing services including Microsoft, Amazon and Google. This allows your application access to a massive amount of storage, memory and computational horsepower on demand while only paying for what you use. Cloud services absolutely must be considered if your product is going to involve a very large number of users, transactions or a large amount of data (TB) requiring high-availability. Especially in terms of startups, inventors, or the deployment truly mass scale applications where the hardware costs can cripple or even kill the prospects of coming to market. Regardless of our favoring the Microsoft product line, which really made this an easy choice for our development efforts, the Microsoft team did a very good job on the Microsoft Windows Azure product and the planned upgrades look very exciting as well.

Why Microsoft Technologies?

Simply stated, Microsoft is a name you can trust. Sure you hear rants and raves all of the time. We have also heard all of the excuses and rhetoric about whos-its and what-nots galore. That being said, you don't end up on almost every computer by being a bad product. You can't support nearly any hodge podge of hardware without some seriously intelligent engineering somewhere along the way and you cannot keep a user base measured in billions without knowing something about customer service. This may seem a little scary but Microsoft (and Google and Apple, etc.) knows what is on your computer, how you use it, how often it is on, your screen resolution, the ram and processor. They use this information to deliver products that run optimally for their user base (you, me, most people, everywhere) and we use their products to deliver quality and reliability to our customers, not to mention the speed increase by knowing the ins and outs of how all of your products operate together. Don't get us wrong, open source software is great. It is a wonderful option for anyone who has some in house technology and a support structure built around those technologies and knowledgeable staff on hand. Otherwise, you probably have Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office running on your computer and more than likely all of the other Microsoft technologies will seamlessly fit into your environment. They will be able to be installed and, for the most part operational, quickly and easily by someone with very little computer experience and there will be a phone number to call if there are any problems along the way. Additionally Microsoft has well defined life-cycles, support-cycles , upgrade road maps, support infrastructure with easy access to well maintained and free documentation, training videos and software updates. If your project has already been developed in Java, PHP, JavaScript, JSP, C, C++, Fortran, Perl or some other language, our professionals can still upgrade your application or port it to Microsoft technologies.

• Common vision across all products
• Easy integration into current system
• Proven reliability, scalability and performance
• One of the world's largest support infrastructures
• Built with testing and information from one of the world's largest user bases
• Reduced development time
• Increased Performance
• Product longevity