Local to Eau Claire. Remote to the world.
Open Source solutions produce better software.
Our philosophy: Data First. Honor thy User.
We've written integration software for phone switches, drivers for cell and radio modems and realtime trading systems. We've written integration software for Panasonic's QC robots and extended their capabilities with a scripting language
We wrote threaded store-and-forward messaging from realtime systems to back-end systems and databases, branching out into artificial intelligence solutions for banks, trading firms, retail operations, military procurement and logistics.

Technologies:

Methodologies: UML, Agile, RUP/ Booch, SDLC

How We Do Business:

We divide a project into four quarters.
First Quarter: developers work out infrastructure considerations and security mechanisms. Business analysts interview and compose use cases.
Second Quarter: client designates an alpha user, our liaison and subject matter expert. We write the first draft, documenting along the way, building a testing framework for individual components.
Third Quarter: The first draft always reveals shortcomings. We pull apart the first draft and rebuild from what we learned, often several times. We construct a realistic test environment, supported by meaningful datasets and instrumentation. By the end of the third quarter, we're deploying pretty much every day.
Fourth Quarter: The alpha user introduces the system to the world. If we've done our job right, the alpha user understands the system and can do all the training. The application goes live when the security is validated.

How Catenary Software is Different:

We tend to use Open Source solutions where we can, simply because the solutions are reliable and do not create closed-source dependencies for our clients. We develop over Linux, using Windows machinery for compatibility testing. For smaller websites we use Apache, PHP, jQuery and MySQL a good deal because they're always available. Our current websites all support smart phones.
We are not technology zealots. We've been at this a while and we abide by two principles:
Data First: the real world is described in data, not merely process and promises.
Honor thy User: Unless everyone from owner to end user understands and participates in the solution, it only becomes a problem.
An excellent consultant makes minimal changes and never tries to tell the client how to run his own business. It is the hallmark of the idiot that he wants to redo everything.
Catenary Software embodies the old school virtues of honesty, accountability, mentoring, knowledge transfer and value for money. We fix our errors for free. We always train the client's personnel to use and extend what we've created for them. We write clear and effective documentation.

What's a Catenary?

A catenary is the curve described by a hanging chain or cable, supported only by its ends. Huygens coined the word in 1690 from the Latin, catena, a chain. Mathematically, the catenary is the graph of the hyperbolic cosine.
Galileo, writing in 1638, said a hanging rope was almost a parabola. In 1691, the Bernoulli brothers, Leibniz and Huygens finally derived the equations for the catenary.
The catenary curve is everywhere. Every telephone line going from pole to pole hangs in a catenary curve. Spider webs, simple suspension bridges, the St. Louis Gateway Arch is a modified inverted catenary. Engineers refer to the catenary as a funicular curve and railroad tracks are designed to curve in this manner. Hanging springs are elastic catenaries.
The catenary curve is a natural shape. Writing to Thomas Paine about the construction of an arch for a bridge, Thomas Jefferson said:
I have lately received from Italy a treatise on the equilibrium of arches, by the Abbe Mascheroni. It appears to be a very scientifical work. I have not yet had time to engage in it; but I find that the conclusions of his demonstrations are, that every part of the catenary is in perfect equilibrium. It is a great point, then, in a new experiment, to adopt the sole arch, where the pressure will be equally borne by every point of it. If any one point is pushed with accumulated pressure, it will introduce a danger, foreign to the essential part of the plan.
Perfect equilibrium. We like that idea. Our solutions are bridges, arches reliably communicating the right information to the right people, the right way. Each end point gets its data as it wishes to see it and can send what data it can furnish in the manner it wishes.
Our logo was designed by Kevin Pazik. Kevin Pazik is currently studying Architecture (BsArch) and Art History (Minor) at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In addition to school, Kevin is actively participating in the Department of Urban Speculation, where he has led many student projects as well as worked with UIC faculty on speculative research.

Chaucer's Clerk:

Of studie took he moost cure and moost heede.
Noght o word spak he moore than was neede,
And that was seyd in forme and reverence,
And short and quyk, and ful of hy sentence;
Sownynge in moral vertu was his speche,
And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.

He took utmost care and heed for his study.
Not one word spoke he more than was necessary;
And that was said with due formality and dignity
And short and lively, and full of high morality.
Filled with moral virtue was his speech;
And gladly would he learn and gladly teach.