We focus on what we do best and enlist others to supplement our own skills:
• We have a strategic partnership with Obermeier Software of Verl, Germany for software development and hardware / software integration.
• We have carefully architected the products so that each feature that we develop is reusable in a Lego-like manner. This maximizes our ability to make each product enhancement quickly available
to all members of the S4 Open product family and minimizes our support cost because the code base for each feature is only maintained in one place.
• We made the strategic decision early on not to be in the hardware design and development business. All of our products are hosted on commercially available, highly reliable industrial PCs.
• We also made the decision that our products would be delivered as network appliances. That is, a fully integrated bundle that includes hardware, pre-installed software, and wizards to aid the
installer with system setup and commissioning. This removes much of the risk associated with installing a new system and therefore minimizes our customers’ support demands on our resources.
• We are building a channel. Each channel partner is required to provide pre-sales engineering support and 1st level post sales support to their customers.