I have a friend that works for a company. They use a software product that is aged, and written in Delphi. There are concerns at this company about the life of the software company that provides the software (which they pay a monthly license to use). It's quite specific software.
My friend has spoken to his boss and I am being invited in with the potential opportunity to "re-write" their windows application with a view to also supplying source-code (C#, is what I plan to provide should this kick off).
Giving this some more thought, and even though it could give me some nicely-needed cash, I wonder what is the best option here...
The initial requirement would appear to be to replicate this application exactly as it stands. It was not developed in-house and therefore is used by other companies as-well. It's large and complex. While this does not worry me, I am concerned at the cost and time to do this just to bring it "in-house". They don't appear to want any new or different functionality, just a code-base they own.
So I guess, my real question; now that you have background information - is it worth me suggesting that rather than re-write this thing dot-for-dot, and feature-for-feature, to actually see what parts they use/don't use - and design an application tailored just for them rather than the generic off-the-shelf one they are using?
It seems a huge waste to just duplicate the application just to have ownership, but then I'm a programmer and not a business-decision-maker :)
Any ideas/thoughts/flames?