Platform independence brings a multitude of benefits to clients as well as developers

Absolute commitment to a single product or platform solution has never been an option for us. Instead, we have endeavoured to adopt future technologies without prejudice, first to test and later to fully adopt. We believe in choosing the right tool for the right job and not limiting ourselves to the constraints of a specific product or platform. Using multiple service providers also comes with the benefit of not locking oneself to a single product or platform.

It is very prudent for a business to ask itself whether it wants to purchase a product or a solution. When purchasing a solution, it should be constructed with the best components that are available. Expensive systems employed by large corporations can be especially rigid. It might be easier to simply hand over the money and buy a specific product if the main goal lies only in getting systems up and running. Whether this type of approach is sound and serves an actual need is a different story entirely, however. If the goal is to quickly put together a prototype of an idea or a new business case, using as many ready-made products as possible makes sense. For some organisations this can be an effective solution, but caveats apply. What is the current situation? What is the problem being solved? Is the involved system critical to the business? What benefits and worth does the system provide?

An example of venturing to new technologies at Trineria is our testing of the Go(lang) programming language and putting it into practice, which we have been doing for several years by this point. Over time, we have accumulated substantial experience in using the language by employing it in different client projects. Today, Go is seeing more and more demand in the field.

The best solution usually comes in the form of platform independence

Platform independence and budget do correlate to an extent. When software is developed without using large proprietary components, development costs may go a little higher. Although development may cost more, savings can then come in the form of better software functionality, as well as lower maintenance and data centre costs. As a platform independent vendor needs to have a wide range of know-how on different programming languages, cloud services, and frameworks, the previously mentioned advantages can be achieved.

Some software companies decide to work as development houses for specific service providers and they end up specialising only in technologies and services used and provided by a particular client. If the client only uses certain products, they often decide to work with companies that specialise in those same products. The risk here is that when something can not be done with the chosen products, the end result may be either unreliable, unsustainable, or both. When there are no alternative tools available, serious limits are posed on execution. If the pre-defined toolbox comes up short, the developer may not even know that there are other ways of achieving solutions to the problems at hand.

Priority should be on recognising a current vendor’s most fit-for-purpose products and utilise other vendors’ products or fully customised software where appropriate. A quintessential example of this is one of our clients whose operations are overseen by the Financial Supervisory Authority. FSA’s supervision comes with myriad requirements, such as system redundancies in case of power and network outages. While building our client’s systems, it was decided that we will avoid dependency on a single vendor. For this reason, we made it possible to migrate the client’s cloud service to another vendor’s data centre, on a very short notice if need be. 

Platform independence reduces risks when the unthinkable happens

On top of the ability to choose the best possible tool for any given situation, platform independence also reduces risks. Let us take a situation where an entire cloud service has been built on a single vendor’s products and this vendor decides to double their fees. Migrating to a competitor’s data centre will likely be a slow and costly endeavour when the systems have not been built on open standards. On the hardware side, we are seeing considerable production and logistics challenges brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. If a business is dependent on a single factory for their products, a crisis situation can place said business in a very precarious position.

Trineria is able to offer its services and expertise to a wide range of clients. We can develop for Azure, AWS, or any other server platform. The client is at the centre of our development, and we strive to utilise as many of their existing systems as possible. The client may not always realise what the actual problem is, and it is our mission to provide well thought-out insight on how to make something work. One of our core tenets is Honesty, and we will always recommend the best possible solution, even if it means less work hours and earnings for us. It is important to consider future needs as well, and to not only concentrate on the problem at hand. Above all, we want to do things in ways that make sense.

Sensible and flexible work practices also help in motivating our own staff. From the client’s perspective, this manifests as development teams that know what they are doing and who are eager to execute. Our staff is constantly learning, which is a key motivator for enjoying the work.

The author of this blog, Jussi Mikkonen, is Trineria’s CTO and manages the company’s software development.