Vulcan Labs aims to be a programming tech hub for Western Cape town Somerset West

Vulcan Labs, a new web and mobile development company based in Somerset West, is positioning itself to aid the local developer community through access to industry expertise.

Founder Angus Miller sees Vulcan Labs’ role as that of a tech collective or incubator for developers, “We are very excited to be a part of the booming tech scene in the Western Cape and look forward to adding value through workshops, hosting of tech innovation meetings, events and knowledge sharing.”

Vulcan Labs specialises in building solutions using programming language Ruby on Rails, a much sought-after platform which allows for a functioning blueprint of an application to be created quickly and easily.

Miller believes that Vulcan Labs’ competitive advantage is its use of a ‘phased approach.’

“We work with entrepreneurs and businesses to create apps that are functional at each phase, that allow for the app and its features to test the market at every phase, so at the end of the development cycle the application is fully functional and, more importantly, fully relevant.”

This approach allows for developers to test a concept before investing unnecessary time and money into a full-featured and large-scale application. Miller argues that an application is often an experimental idea with features not tested in a market environment, and to create an application with all the bells and whistles can waste time, and also money.

The official launch of Vulcan Labs is on Friday 23 August, and includes a high level introduction to Ruby on Rails development, a demonstration of a sample application and a “getting started” guide to Ruby on Rails, or as Miller puts it, “basically everything we wished we knew when we started Ruby on Rails.”

Powerful websites built with Ruby on Rails include streaming site Hulu, humour site Funny or Die, customer support site ZenDesk and eccommerce site Fab.