Competitive Advantage

FairCom's competitive advantage stems from the company's focus on customer needs and its unwavering dedication to database technology. This is particularly evident when one compares FairCom products to those of competitors in the marketplace, with FairCom offering faster performance, more flexibility, and good value.

Indeed, when comparing FairCom's products with those of competitors, customers typically give one or more of the following reasons for selecting FairCom technology over other industry options:

Zero Administration Security Exposure Portability Performance Value/Price Scalability Flexibility Reputation Reliability Service

Zero Administration

IT personnel often ask about the database technology behind a new application. Having had to deal with the tuning, security concerns, patches, and other maintenance rituals of competing database technology, experience has taught these professionals to be wary of introducing a new variable in their IT stack. What is important to understand is that FairCom technology has been developed from the ground up to require zero administration. This is evidenced by the range of products using our technology that require a true "lights out" operational model. These applications include telephone PBX systems, kidney dialysis machines, CAT scan machines, gas pumps, etc. Because the sophistication of our technology is transparent to the end-user, many c-tree customers recommend simply installing the c-tree Server, setting up backups, and leaving it alone. We routinely hear of customers with the c-tree Server running for many years without being shut down and, more importantly, without the need for any user intervention!

Security Exposure

One of the side benefits of a zero administration database with distributed deployment through ISVs is that FairCom's technology flies under the radar of persons with nefarious intent. This provides FairCom with the benefit of being less of a security target than other database providers such as Microsoft or Oracle. Consequently, FairCom is proud of the fact that we have not had to release a security patch to date.

Portability

The c-treeACE Servers are supported on close to 30 different platforms. Because we provide source code to much of our core technology, c-tree has been ported by individual companies to over 100 platforms. This flexibility to run on practically any platform available, makes c-tree a natural solution in the ever-changing landscape of platforms.

Performance

FairCom's function API is designed with performance in mind for every platform. With over 25 years of unwavering focus on database technology, FairCom has established itself as a leader in database performance and reliability. FairCom customers routinely compare our product's performance to that of other database solutions and find that our technology usually comes out on top.

Value/price

Efficient management and complete dedication to its technology allows FairCom to put unparalleled database development tools in the developer's hands at reasonable prices and low total cost of ownership.

Scalability

FairCom's unique architecture offers easy scalability from embedded devices to multi-CPU enterprise systems. For example, developers can upgrade from a desktop operating system to a more powerful server platform without changing the underlying code. Further, FairCom provides utilities to simplify the migration of data. One FairCom customer ported from Windows to Solaris running on a SPARC CPU, including data, in a morning!

Flexibility

FairCom offers the programmer maximum flexibility by offering multiple API's, thereby providing multiple access methods to their data. For example, programmers can choose to access data using a record-oriented ISAM API or a relational SQL API concurrently, all on the same file. In addition, FairCom provides source code to the core of the database engine, giving developers an unprecedented level of detailed control.

Reputation

By dedicating itself solely to database technology, FairCom has achieved an outstanding reputation in the database industry for providing exceptional technology and technical support at reasonable prices.

Reliability

FairCom customers from Federal Express to NASA routinely rely on FairCom's 25+ year history of providing state-of-the-art database technology. With hundreds of millions of end-users storing their mission critical data within FairCom databases, FairCom's reliability history is outstanding!

Service

One key factor often mentioned by strategic customers is FairCom's willingness to adapt and customize its technology and pricing/license models to meet specific application needs. For example, FairCom implemented interface hooks to allow Citibank engineers to incorporate special functionality into an electronic monetary transfer application. According to Panos Neris, Vice-President, Citibank London, "FairCom delivered quality service and products through out the design process to our implementation. They have many years of providing innovative, dependable solutions to the commercial software community, and it shows." FairCom's willingness to adapt to needs of individual customers is unique in the commercial database industry "indeed, in the entire software industry" and represents a significant competitive advantage to the company.