HMW Computing

This is the new website for HMW Computing. Until recently all of our company information was held on the 4XTRA web site, as we are the Administrator of the joint venture. Although HMW continues to pursue its own aims, much of our current trading activity is through 4xtra.

Who are we?

HMW Computing was founded in 1981 as a City of London based specialist consultancy offering bespoke systems development and financial modelling to the Financial Markets and Insurance industry.

Initially we worked mainly on time-sharing systems and quickly developed a involvement with Rapid Application Development. In 1986 we began a long involvement with Midland bank (now part of HSBC), first modelling financial instruments and then developing a Foreign Exchange Dealing System called MID4X. From this experience and development for other clients4xtraDS was born,which boasts an impressive range of facilities across a wide spectrum of trading products.

The consultancy side has continued to evolve, embracing Internet solutions and Agile methods, enhancing our own in-house methodology until we became full members of the DSDM Consortium. Although no longer members, since that time we have worked to incorporate our approach within the DSDM framework. We have also absorbed many ideas from the eXtreme Programming approach.

The 4xtra Alliance

In early 2000, we formally constituted a Joint Venture with Phil Last Limited and John Butler Associates after successful co-operation on a number of Y2K projects, though the three companies had co-operated for many years prior too this date. The Joint Venture is called the 4xtra alliance.

Its aim is to develop an integrated series of products and services, based on our long history of collaboration and the wide range of existing application packages, together with new Internet based offerings.

The Professional Contractors Group

The PCG describes itself thus

PCG was formed in May 1999 to provide independent contractors and consultants with a representative voice in opposition to the original IR35 proposals. Since then, we have evolved from being a single-issue campaign group to being a fully fledged, not-for-profit professional body representing knowledge workers who choose to be self-employed.

HMW wasn't in any way affected by IR35 (neither performing work which fell within the scope of the legislation, nor being a self-employed individual), but we joined the PCG soon after its inception and became founder members of the PCG's Quality Assurance programme which aims to provide ISO9000 qualification for small companies in the IT sector. Please visit the main PCG site for more details.