Build your own integrated Business Operating System or Gain Instant Access to a COTS Platform?

Author:  Michele Potgieter

You can either create your own integrated solution – one that incorporates the ever-evolving Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and a variety of individualised solutions – or you can use an extensible COTS architecture that is adaptive and quickly reacts intuitively to changes.

Building your own platform naturally challenges the skills of an IT team, but carries the significant risks associated with all internal development. Historically, these developments require far more time, management and long-term support expense than expected. Even if you are fortunate enough to identify and dedicate the best resources and choose the currently appropriate supporting technologies for the initial development, future-proofing and supporting this solution will remain an ongoing concern. In-house developers (and contractors) come and go and with them goes their intimate software development knowledge, resulting in gaps appearing on the build. New applications are introduced to the organisation. This poses the questions:-

• What is your organisation’s primary goal?
• Are you a software development company?
• Even if you are, why would you build your own database technology?

Internal BOS productivity developments of this complexity require specific considerations such as:-

• Resourcing the correct people, may mean recruiting expenses and time delays
• Ensuring highly experienced talent full-time on the project
• Balancing of internal demands on skilled internal software development resources
• Retaining the experienced specialised software skills
• Managing the development process on a complex software project
• Assuming the initial functional goals of the project are met and go live;
  • The need for constant monitoring and re-assessment of the integration between the various point-systems, in turn requiring continuous redevelopment
• Scope creep typically creates severe budget variations

No two companies are alike, even operating in the same business sector. You would need to integrate your unique strategic objectives, people, product technologies and service offerings into a well-designed BOS, customised to the needs and fine details of your organisation.

A tried and tested commercial BOS design can often offer the likelihood of reducing traditional IT point-solution costs due to its innate software functionality being pre-packaged and even extended where customer demands justify.

AFFECTLI embraces contributions from tried and field-proven functions and components necessary for a successful versatile, future-proofed and trustworthy BOS productivity platform. Even if an internal platform has already been developed and implemented, the AFFECTLI architecture can absorb and digest what has been learned by that system’s experiences to build on the next level of superior productivity.The hugely experienced AFFECTLI BOS/DTx teams can also assist you define how to implement, what roles are required, how to measure success and what skills are required.