Transformative Software

You dream it, we build it

Need an engaging mobile application? Or an automated business process? Looking for a data management system with visualisations? Or if you're having trouble identifying which solution you need, we can help with that too.

Start with the dream

In a perfect world, how would it work? This philosophy drives us to transform your visions into innovative realities.

Software development starts with the dream

We've worked with companies of every shape and size to develop software solutions that meet their unique needs and solve difficult business and technology challenges.

Whether you're creating a market-disrupting app or a powerful business intelligence tool, you'll be secure in the knowledge that your project is in safe hands.

If you've started a project already with another software company and it needs rescuing, we're the software company to come to. We've saved many projects that were destined for failure and turned them into a resounding success.

User-Centered Design

Putting you first.
Sign-off on a usable prototype, before agreeing to development. No wasted time, no wasted money.

Custom Software

Tailored to you.
Bespoke software offers solutions to your business's unique challenges. No need to compromise.

Agile Development

Evolving through collaboration.
With our agile methodology, knowledge is always fed back into the end product, resulting in the best possible end-results.

Tomorrow's software technology today!

Your trusted software development partner

Newicon culture - juggling, guitar playing maniacs!

Newicon is a collection of technology enthusiasts that invent the cutting edge. We have not yet encountered a challenge that was not possible. Technology is rarely the limitation! We aim to be your secret weapon in delivering technology that provides more value for your customers, whilst doing it more efficiently.

Innovative Web Applications

If you can dream it, we can build it!
Web software can power your whole business. We utilise innovative web technology to improve all aspects of business, from customer facing portals, through to back-office system. Got an innovative idea you would like us to build? Let us know!

Mobile App Development

Access your business from anywhere
Mobile plays an ever increasing role in business today. From allowing your customers to interact with your business and their data, through to managing your staff and back office operations. We integrate mobile solutions with our bespoke web-apps and also provide integration with third party systems.

Internet of Things (IoT)

Connect to the physical world
We design and develop customer led controller apps for mobile, and the web-applications that manage and control these devices. Our expertise has allowed us to work with electronic firms and entrepreneurs to develop applications for innovative products. Do you have an IoT challenge for us?

Client portals & Data dashboards

Connect your business, customers & data
Get your back-end system streamlined and optimised, then create access to it with an easy-to-use portal. Completing those two tasks could be the most transformative action your business takes this year. Modern businesses are built on data; take control of yours today.
Artificial General Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence

LLM’s, Generative AI, AR, Machine learning
The age of artificial intelligence is upon us. From copilot assistants through to dynamic self organising applications and smart agents. The AI gold rush of opportunities awaits the bold.

Cutting-edge technology to solve your challenges

Our consultancy services help you find the right technology for your challenges.

A Newicon illustration of a brain becoming a circuit board representing AI

AI & Machine Learning

Want to know how AI and machine learning could benefit your business? Talk to us today!

A Newicon illustration of a face wearing a virtual reality headset

AR, VR & Pattern Recognition

The world is changing - borders between our reality and digital reality are blurring!

A Newicon illustration of a cloud connecting to a circuit board

Connected Cloud Computing

How we save and store data has completely changed. Don't get left behind, ask about cloud computing.

A Newicon illustration of a cloud connecting to data points

Database Design and Management

With edge computing, we can reduce latency and bandwidth use; bringing data closer to you.

Software Development FAQs

Newicon is based in Bristol, UK. We also have remote teams. But we are born and bred in Bristol and have our software and design studio in the heart of Bristol city centre. While geography is great and we love face to face meetings we have also worked and travelled to see clients in France, Switzerland and USA and more. The digital world knows no bounds.

Software consultancy is a service that we offer you to help you get the best out of your software project.

We use our software expertise to consult with you on the best ways forward. We offer consultancy throughout our process. Our team can help with technical aspects of a solution, from migrating into the cloud or scaling the technology. We can also help with developer best practice and solution handovers. Example areas software consultancy can help with are:

  1. Software technology selection
  2. Software development
  3. Software testing
  4. Software installation
  5. Software maintenance
  6. Software customisation
  7. Software scalability
  8. Software security
  9. Software handover and documentation
  10. Software API design and architecture
  11. Software migrate to cloud and scalability
  12. Data strategy warehousing and backup
  13. Data insights and discovery
  14. Database design
  15. Devops: Developer operations, providing documentation, tools and best practices for internal software teams

If you have an idea contact us by our online form, e-mail or phone. You can also book a meeting with one of our team members.

We will set up a meeting. It's good to have as much information ready as possible about your idea.

On the initial call we will try to get a feel for the project and give a ROM - a (rough order of magnitude) costing - this is just a guess within a range that feels reasonable based on the technical complexity of your idea, from building a brochure website to building the next Facebook or Google!

This really depends on the audience you are targeting and what your app does. Typically mobile apps need to talk to a server or a web app in order to process user logins or preferences and so there is often a server and web app component.

In a perfect world you want your app to work on any preferred platform the user has. Whether they are on their phone, in the browser, on their desktop computer, iPad or on their smart TV.

Modern apps today like Slack, and Microsoft teams use Electron.js which is a Node.js (Javascript) tool that enables a web app to run on the desktop as a separate application.

The application can then work well on both a website in the users browser or on the desktop through a downloadable application.

A similar technique using Cordova or iconic can then also package an application to deliver across smart phone devices.

These are then available for download in the various app stores. Progressive web apps also exist that are designed o function in a similar way to mobile apps, once installed they can also be indistinguishable from a native application however it's not possible to install them through an app store.

This can be both a blessing and a curse depending on your particular use case.

We consider our role to be educational. There is no "computer says no" here. There is usually a natural knowledge divide and our job is to bring our software development knowledge and apply that to your unique situation.

We must also use your expertise in order to make the solution the best it can be. We have worked with complete technophobes to other software development experts. When there is nothing physical we develop a visual language in the form of a clickable prototype - everyone can collaborate on this and share expertise.

Then during the project development progress is measured with working testable software in line with the agile software principles. This allows for all people from diverse background to understand and collaborate on the project.

Scalability depends on the particular solution. You can achieve scalability in many ways using many techniques.

We use state of the art hosting across a range of providers. From AWS to Digital Ocean. We have also scaled hardware solutions using Raspberry Pi.

We are able to scale software applications vertically and horizontally. A cloud system that scales horizontally automatically creates new servers and computing power to cope with fluctuating demand.

A vertical scaling system typically has fewer servers and scales by increasing the hardware capacity.

Both options are valid and make sense depending on the scale. Horizontally scaling solutions increase the potential for downtime as each new server can fail and therefore requires load balancing, also it can cost more.

However, ultimately to achieve massive scale you will need a multi-server horizontal scale approach.

This is an area that is exploding in options at the moment with Amazon with AWS, Google and Microsoft with Azure and IBM all entering the market with custom solutions. Whilst some solutions aid rapid initial development and scale the costs of such services also scale and often sometimes not linearly! It can also be very challenging to understand what your monthly hosting charges will be.

It is also important to know where your data is stored. If third party services are used in an effort to rapidly enter the market it's important to also consider a failover plan and not get locked in to any one provider.

Newicon has always championed open source technologies. Open source operating systems and programming languages dominate the cloud internet space. We work with you and factor in the project's specifics to develop a sensible scaling plan.

Whilst we are technology agnostic when taking on projects we have key technologies that serve us well.

Typically these are Node.js (Javascript) and PHP and MySQL or MariaDB is our database workhorse.

Often there is a confusion between frameworks and core programming languages as the frameworks can sometimes be more popular.

For Javascript we prefer to use Vue.js as a framework but we also have projects we maintain based on react, backbone, jQuery and vanilla Javascript.

For PHP we typically use a collection of open source packages or Yii or Laravel

Then there are applications built on the same technologies (PHP, Javascript, MySQL) such as WordPress and Magento.

As we specialise in understanding the core technologies that everything else is built upon we can easily support a wide range of applications built on them. For mobile development we typically use Cordova or Ionic with Vue.js this enables us to build mobile applications using web technology and limit the impact from vendor specific changes.

To be technology agnostic means we go into each new challenge with an open mind and don't shy away from projects because they may have sections written in different languages.

Software best practices are applicable to all software no matter the language used. Because Newicon builds lots of new software projects that must integrate seamlessly with legacy systems we encounter many legacy platforms and technologies too, sometimes these are completely bespoke and built by developers several decades ago.

The Newicon team is a collection of problem solvers first. We hire people that can solve problems and love to learn.

All computer languages are built on the principles of computers. No language can change that and often it's just a matter of syntax.

Syntax is something that can be easily learnt if you understand the fundamentals of computing.

We believe this so strongly that we have created an academy to try and teach these principles!

For new technologies we have not used there might be a lead time for us to learn and understand how it works, this lead time is considered in our proposals and often not charged to our customers.

Newicon is confident in a wide range of open source software technologies, Newicon’s software developers are expert problem solvers and comfortable with both traditional and new solutions to solve highly unique business challenges. The important thing is that we choose the right technology for your specific problem and business objectives. We can analyse the pros and cons of various technical approaches and manage the risks each technology provides.

The typical deliverables is a working app and the source code. This will also include the logins to various services you need. We do provide technical support and hosting services should your application need it, but you have full access to the source code and any assets needed - its yours to do with as you want.

We have helped people take on internal teams and onboard them with code we have developed. We have also taken on projects from companies that have an overworked internal team.

We break most software projects into two major phases - an architecture design phase and a software development phase.

Our software development phase further breaks the project down into small units of work called sprints.

Each sprint delivers a testable working subset of the final project that can be tested by everyone involved.

Feedback at these stages is welcomed. We have written a more detailed guide on our software development process that can be read here

During our design architecture phase we develop complete working high fidelity clickable prototypes that feel as close to the finished app as possible.

We break all projects down into small deliverable chunks of working software that can be tested throughout the process.

Want to build something special?

From Digital Transformation to Augmented Reality, we can help you build your future. Get in touch with us today.

Need some advice?

Looking to utilise digital technology to streamline your operations or launch new products and services? Contact our digital strategy director, Mark, for a free consultation call.

Testimonials

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Begin your digital innovation future, today

Send us a message for more information about how we can help you and your business