Recently a construction company came to Altamente with the unique problem of having so many field sites and traveling engineers that project management had become a thorny challenge. The company had earlier invested in web modules for expensive group and project management software as well as a web interface for their accounting system. However, a year and many tens of thousands of dollars later, they were no better off. The engineers in the field were dissuaded from using the web interfaces because the interaction with the software and database rendered so slowly. They considered it a waste of their time. Reports they managed informally via spreadsheets in minutes, took an hour or more through the estimation program. Frustration set in and the company was on the hunt for a new solution.

Short from installing new hardware and licenses in every remote office to run programs locally, the company asked, "what can we do?"