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What is Difference Engine Software?*

We are a software development and IT services company as well has a hosted software vendor. Our experts on staff provide high quality IT solutions based on the Microsoft suite of technologies (see our Services section ). While developing software for our clients we struck upon the idea for our first product offering.

The Project Manager initially started out as an internal application that we used to track our own Agile process. We now offer it to the community for free. It is our goal to hone the product through community involvement and feedback until it becomes a viable commercial product. We believe that any quality software should be accessible for evaluation so we intend to always offer a free version.

The Idea

The idea behind Difference Engine was first conceived of in the late 1990's by software engineer Michael Annucci. By that time internet speeds and web development tools were getting to the point where it was viable to create small applications that would run in a web browser. Quite a few people in the industry talked about using the web to deliver applications and the term Application Service Provider (ASP) was coined. Several different types of applications were built and tested but the lack of a rich development enviroment and spotty broadband covereage severely limited their acceptance.

Trial by Fire

Those original ideas had to simmer for the next 9 years as Michael accepted a position in IT management. Those were formative years spent in a fast paced entrepreneurial environment which fostered Agile development strategies and a keen understanding how technology should support business. Managing a team of skilled developers with a mile-long project list quickly revealed which project management techniques worked and which ones did not. This helped formulate a hybrid development strategy that focuses on human interaction and business goals rather than the technology itself (see our section on Design Strategies.)

The advent of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), MVC design patterns, AJAX frameworks, and widespread broadband internet access has brought unparalleled functionality to the web. By January 2009, Michael rekindled the idea of creating a software services company and Difference Engine was finally launched.

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