The Federated Software Group, Inc.  

Corporate Background

The Federated Software Group is a St. Louis based corporation that has been providing engineering services nationwide since 1992. We focus on systems engineering and network integration services using various UNIX, VMS, and Windows-based systems. Federated has experienced a twenty-fold increase in engineering staff since its inception. Most of this increase has been the direct result of increased efforts with existing customers who want us to do more. Our corporate philosophy is to focus on a small number of customers and establish a long-term, highly productive relationship with each. Federated has four offices, located in Maryland Heights, Missouri, Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Swansea and O’Fallon, Illinois.

Our Customers

Our customer base includes both Government and commercial clients. In the St. Louis area, our primary activities are at Scott AFB, providing application development, electronic data interchange, database design and management, and system management and security services for the USAF Air Mobility Command and US Transportation Command. Federated is the system integrator for several critical command and control systems and has provided engineering services for Government contracting and billing systems. These systems are comprised of large relational database servers and client application systems networked together worldwide. To date, Federated has engineered and operationally maintains Government systems housing over 100 Gigabytes of online data. We work closely, not only with USAF personnel, but also with other integrators such as Unisys and CSC.

On the commercial side, we’ve performed for large corporations, such as GTE, and worked with other small engineering firms to develop and deploy networked database solutions. These projects have included both onsite support at customer facilities and in-house development at Federated facilities. Our Maryland Heights office houses a number of computer resources used to support in-house development for customers and provides meeting and office space for our development staff. Amongst our customers, we have a reputation as a tenacious engineering group that can quickly solve the hardest of software problems.

Our Capabilities

Federated has a wide breadth of engineering talents. We are capable of designing and developing systems from the ground up, as well as developing critical components that work within existing system architectures. We have strong relationships with a number of critical product vendors, such as Oracle, Informix, Cognos, Hewlett-Packard, and Compaq and MicroSoft. We are a reseller of some commercial products and have acted as beta testers to several commercial product developers. These relationships ensure that our staff receives the latest products and training, but more importantly that we have the latest vendor information and direct access to their support personnel. Federated also has a number of certified Microsoft engineers on staff and is a Microsoft Solution Provider, one of few in the St. Louis area. This program gives us special access to the latest Microsoft software, programs, and support for our customer’s projects.

Here’s a brief synopsis of our engineering experience:

• Operating Systems
  We develop software solutions using Hewlett-Packard, SCO, Digital/Compaq, Linux and SUN UNIX, Digital VMS, and Windows 95/98/NT operating systems.
   
• Applications
  The majority of applications we develop for our customers are information management systems using relational databases. We develop applications using Motif, Windows (Visual Basic, Visual C++), and WWW development technologies. In addition, we build the system components that support application software, such as electronic data interchange (EDI) components that provide data transfer between different customer systems or between our customer’s systems and other external data sources.
   
• WWW Applications
  We have extensive experience with developing complete WWW server systems and applications. These applications provide browser access to complex dynamic read-write applications serving data stored within relational databases.
   
• Languages
  Our engineering staff is fluent in a number of languages and development environments, including C, C++, Visual Basic, and Ada. We make extensive use of software development tools for configuration management and kit production and often develop our own code generators to speed production and maintain constituency. We have several language specialists on staff that develop language parsers and interpreters/compilers.
   
• Databases
  Our staff has extensive experience with relational database engines on UNIX, VMS, and NT servers. We’ve developed systems using Oracle, Informix, Sybase, and SQL Server product suites. We provide database design, tuning, and management services to our customers and can train their personnel on these products. We’ve also worked extensively in the area of data replication using vendor products or custom engineered solutions. The applications we build interface to the database product using embedded or dynamic SQL. We’re experienced with installing and configuring the various database vendor network components such as SQLnet and ODBC.
   
• Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
  One of our talents is designing and developing software to interchange data between different systems. Our solutions have involved transfer between different relational database systems and systems supporting other data storage mechanisms. We’ve provided store and forward solutions, data parsers and translators, and the software components to manage these complex environments. To date, FSG has developed over two dozen custom EDI solutions for our customers. We also specialize in developing critical documentation, such as Interface Design Documents, for these projects. These sorts of information are critical to the long term operation of EDI systems and help support coordinated changes.
   
• System and network security
  We have extensive experience from dealing with military systems in the area of system and network security. Federated has provide security and audit design and development to our customers, in addition to providing specialized security services such as risk assessment and penetration testing. Our staff has published several reviewed national journal articles dealing with secure systems.

Our Personnel

The engineering staff of Federated is comprised of experienced individuals. Many are former employees of larger engineering firms, such as Digital Equipment Corporation and McDonnell Douglas/Boeing. All of our engineers have at least ten years of real software engineering experience, many in software engineering projects operating under SEI Level II and III standards. We believe this sort of experience level is critical to solving tough systems engineering and integration problems. We don’t hire inexperienced individuals and train them at the customers expense. The people we hire are self-motivated workaholics that can perform on their own or in a group setting. And when we hire an individual, it’s a long-term relationship.

Our Management

Our management staff is small and comprised of senior engineers. We work closely with the customer to ensure timely delivery of services and software. Federated management can support the customer by developing and maintaining project plans and schedules in coordination with engineering staff. Project engineers are encouraged to utilize other engineering resources with Federated to support their customers.