With surveys and campaigns running in hours instead of weeks and with national press, radio and TV advertising, marketing, and PR campaigns sitting alongside or waiting for results there's no time for error or delay.

Our management and development teams background in business, mission and safety critical systems design for blue chip clients means that our software is engineered to service the largest of client requirements, delivering high availability and reliability as standard. This is why customers as diverse as Vodafone UK and Ipsos MORI use the 3rd Degree.

In order to meet the needs of our customers, we deliver an end to end solution : software, hardware, connectivity and hosting, also known as 'Software as a Service', via our high integrity web 2.0 application.

Delivering to you as a 'software as a service' solution means that you get the best possible software, hardware and all round service management without the need for you to install anything internally. All you need is access to the internet and a suitable web browser and you are up and running.

All of our software is developed using Sun's Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) platform. Java EE is the justified benchmark for large scale web 2.0 implementations and powers sites such as Amazon, eBay and iTunes. Java EE brings many advantages including extensive support of open standards, flexibility of hardware and operating system vendor, excellent interoperability with other systems via middleware, scalability, security and maintainability of the code base. In short, everything you would expect from a world class software platform.

The 3rd Degree fully support open standards wherever possible. Sun Microsystems' recent contributions to the open source community offer enterprise class software solutions backed by world class service agreements. The Net Beans development environment is part of this programme and our development platform choice.

A number of factors are important to us in choosing our hardware provider Sun Microsystems. We need high quality, scaleable, reliable and environmentally friendly, efficient power usage to deliver on our core values to our customers.

Processing millions of text messages and responses often in large burst volumes in a timely fashion brings an interesting problem. Sun's breakthrough Ultrasparc T1 chip is designed to process lots of small tasks simultaneously making it perfect for our processing requirements. The 3rd Degree platform has been optimised to fully utilise the Ultrasparc T1 to dramatic effect. This means that survey and form participants receive messages and responses extremely quickly. The 3rd degree has seen significant speed and processing advantages implementing T1 based hardware.

Of course there are some other very significant side effects. The increased throughput of T1 means less hardware to maintain, reduced system complexity, time and ultimately financial savings. Each T1 based server is capable of replacing server machines running several multi-core processors whilst consuming less power which helps us make the delivery of our service more environmentally friendly.

The 3rd Degree are committed Sun Partners and use the full 'Sun Stack' to deliver our system. From developing our code using the excellent Net Beans IDE, through to delivery on Glassfish Application Server on Sun hardware running Solaris 10.

We have a great relationship with Sun and are constantly looking at new hardware and software capabilities to ensure that we run as close to the cutting edge as possible with the service we deliver.

We're extremely pleased and proud to now operate our messaging capability via Sybase 365. Sybase 365 pioneered mobile messaging interoperability, and remains the unrivalled global leader for SMS and MMS, with reach to 700 mobile operators and the processing of more than 100 billion messages per year. At the core of the service is the most extensive, private, operator-grade network for mobile messaging available. Sybase 365 offers top-tier services that run on an operator-grade global network, resulting in superior protection, service and support