“It Starts with an Idea“ is the story of a start-up company in Silicon Valley, co-founded by John Miller, Stephen Gold, and Jan McCleery, a company that grew from John’s “Idea,” Stephen’s marketing skills, and Jan’s software engineering expertise.

Beat the software gorillas ! Win the game and deliver high quality code your customers will love. Quickly and with agility. We did!

Perfection

Our Story is about a little company that beat the software gorillas. Azerity competed with the big gorillas (SAP, Siebel, Oracle) and won every time. And it didn’t cost the clients millions to install and millions more to upgrade. How? Leveraging managers with tried and true experience together with very talented practical software architects and dedicated engineers, the Azerity product demonstrated that software can be done right. High quality, intuitive. Some said it was nearly perfect software.

The Software Lessons

What did we learn? How to build Practical Software.

• One. How to build software that delivers what end users want: software that is intuitive and responsive – even with tens of thousands of users across global networks with large data requirements.
• Two. How to build software that the IT team wants: software that is reliable, maintainable, customizable, and seamlessly updated. We think software companies should charge for value-added services like new features and functions, not for avoidable deployment, management, and upgrade costs.
• Three. How to use the right processes and tools to make sure the software meets spec, is high quality (no bugs, that’s right, none), and completed on-time. A tool that also supports the Customer Service group by giving them easy access to solve customer problems. A prototype of the right software development tool to improve the software process, software quality, and support is Software 2020. Jan’s Blog also has tips and tools for software managers.

The Software Leadership

The Practical Software Methodology was a combined effort by Jan McCleery and Anita Wotiz. Both had worked together in the Aerospace world, both had learned the value and limitations of government waterfall processes. They teamed up at Azerity, where Jan was Co-Founder and CTO, Anita VP of Engineering. Aided by Gary Brink, another senior manager from Aerospace, they developed a practical software methodology that was proven, release after release, to develop bug-free, on-time, scalable, reliable, and maintainable enterprise software.

Jan and Anita

It takes a practical process, practical architecture, and a great team!

Intelic 1999 (name changed to Azerity in 2001)   Front Row: Stephen, his son, wife Mary, Frank, Ketan, Chaiya, Arun. Back Row: Freeman, Starr’s son, Starr, Julie (Jan’s daughter), Jan, Julie, Starr’s other son.

Azerity 2006 Front Row: Hang, Kevin, Arun, Susan, Ashish, Gery. Back Row: Linda, Ken, Stephen, Michael, Ketan, Dale, Jenn, Rich, John, Jan