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PDMS, an IT services firm serving both the public and private sectors, has been appointed by Transport for London (TfL) to develop and implement a new lost property system. The contract has been awarded through the Buying Solutions Framework.
The new application, to go live mid 2010, will provide real time information on lost property so that items can be returned to customers quickly and efficiently. The system includes a browser-based user interface so that customers can register a lost item and search for their own lost items via the Internet. The new lost property system will help cope with an anticipated increase in lost property.
PDMS' solution is based on FoundationsTM, the company's own software development framework, which means the company can deliver a high-performance application faster, cheaper and more efficiently than a bespoke or off-the-shelf solution.
'We offer a better alternative to conventional licensing models. Numbers of users or CPUs are not a particularly good measure of the value of an application, and conventional licensing models for enterprise software can be a very significant barrier to the roll out of successful solutions,' said Chris Gledhill, managing director, PDMS. 'We take a solution- or project-based view of licensing for FoundationsTM. This effectively removes many roadblocks to rapidly expanding access to applications that work well.'
FoundationsTM provides comprehensive object relational mapping, domain modelling and interface / user management capabilities optimised for the Microsoft Enterprise environment. The framework drastically reduces the amount of coding required when compared with a bespoke solution, and in practice is also simpler to implement, cheaper and less restrictive than most projects based on the integration of 'off the shelf' software packages.
TfL handles over 220,000 pieces of lost property each year from London's buses, the Tube, London Overground, the Docklands Light Railway, taxis and Victoria Coach Station.
About PDMS:
Established in 1993, PDMS is a project based IT services company, offering a full range of IT related services ranging from high level business consultancy to software development, support and hosting. PDMS's framework FoundationsTM comprises an extensive library of components to offer the flexibility of custom software at competitive prices. Www.pdms.com . Tel: +44 1624 823833.