General
West Consulting (West) is a leading high-end IT consulting,
development and integration company, founded in 1985.
West offers reliable and scalable services to her clients to help
them achieve their business goals. At the very heart of these
services is West's rigorous approach to software engineering,
extensively used both for the development of conventional and space
related software systems.
Space Activities
West has been delivering consultancy and engineering services to
Estec from 1989 onwards. Moreover, West has prepared and given Unix
and Ada courses to Estec key staff members.
West has been using ESA's software development standards right from
the start. Furthermore, other standard technologies are used such as
the Unified Modelling Language (UML) for designing Object Oriented
(OO) systems. West applies a best-of-breed suite of in-house
standards to be able to maintain the high quality of the software
engineering project activities.
West has a working relationship with a number of leading companies
in the space sector and is currently actively involved in providing
solutions and setting up services based on SAR/Galileo technology.
Below are a few examples of ESA projects carried out since 1989:
* ISO Science Operations -- under the Estec contract SAI/92-94/Dc,
West Consulting -- as a prime contractor -- designed and constructed
all ground segment software for this project. A main objective was to
facilitate science users of the Infrared Space Observatory entering
proposals into the Data Centre;
* SAWA -- under the Estec contract 12385/NL/DS, West Consulting --
as a subcontractor to Atos Origin -- carried out part of the SAWA
project. The objective of SAWA was to allow remote users web access
over a satellite link using standard Internet protocols. West has
been an active party in the design of the SAWA proxy server concept,
and has implemented the optimised transport protocol.
