“We chose Managed Networks over their competitors for many reasons but mainly because their approach focused on prevention rather than cure” - Phil Cross, Managing Director, Mizkan

“The project manager at MN and the supporting team worked tirelessly to overcome the many challenges and we are left with an excellent and robust system tailored for our business needs with first class hassle free support” - Gordon Worswick, Rotrex Ltd

“Through their proactive approach to network management and their excellent team of engineers, Managed Networks have become a highly valued member of the Liberty team. We would have no hesitation in recommending them” - Tom Brown, IT Manager, Liberty Wines

“I can get more done now. The system is easier to administer and, so far, it's been 100 per cent reliable, with no downtime.” - Tom Brown, IT Manager, Liberty Wines

“Managed Networks hosting platform has provided MASECO Private Wealth with a secure, scalable environment to run our business critical applications from. Their technical support team is always quick to respond, highly professional yet very friendly” - Alex Eichhorn, MASECO Private Wealth

The technology we use

Managed Networks is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, so naturally we use Microsoft development tools and platforms. We have worked with other systems in the past and we have substantial experience of database migrations and interfacing to other platforms.

Our core technologies are:

  • .Net for front-end tools and middle-tier business logic (older applications were developed using Visual Basic Version 6).
  • SQL Server 2005 for mid- to large-scale databases. Smaller systems have used Access, the MSDE or simple XML.
  • Internet Information Server with ASP.Net for web-technology front-ends. We tend now to use web technology for most basic user interaction with our systems, as it simplifies installation and support. Our preference is for a strongly server-side application, using ASP.Net pre-processing and HTML forms where possible. Where client-side functionality is needed we tend to use Javascript or VBScript in preference to downloaded controls or Java, although we have used both where the situation warranted.
  • Excel (or PDF derived from Excel) for output reporting. We have a SQLServer to Excel output product, ISLReporter, which allows the use of user-configurable Excel templates including formatting, in-line formulae and user-selection of output fields. We have also made good use of Crystal Reports for bulk output of non-configurable reporting.
  • XML for web-side data storage; where an application is presenting report data on the web or intranet, precompiled XML that has been pre-sliced into asset, portfolio or transactional sets can offer excellent performance without the connection overhead or licence issues that affect live SQLServer interrogation. XML also integrates well with Exchange and Sharepoint (Microsofts intranet-in-a-box offering).
  • We have a strong focus on object-oriented applications, preferring to use n-tier construction in place of traditional client-server architecture (although, once again, we have built a number of very successful client-server applications). The majority of our recent applications have been multi-site, in some cases spanning several continents, and we have developed a bespoke locking and replication engine for SQLServers that use our object model.

We aim to follow Microsoft's lead in designing user interfaces, and our .Net front-end products follow their style guide. For web-technology interfaces we tend to use simpler designs than Microsoft, achieving, we think, clearer page layout and user interface flow.

Managed Networks
Managed Networks