As software companies grow through inorganic means, or mergers and acquisitions (M&A), it is becoming increasingly common for these rollups to underperform after the dust has settled and the real work of integration begins. Specifically, many acquired technology companies have proven to be quite diverse in their broad use of open source, third-party libraries, online software development tutorials from a variety of sources, and others. Further complicating what many companies go through when initially experiencing growth is the omnipresent need to address the rapid need for more competitive features often without stringent architectural oversight or any adopted standards and guidelines.
These technical inconsistencies that develop and persist are usually also accompanied by inefficiencies in operations, maintenance burdens, integration challenges and more. These all inevitably negatively affect business development, customer satisfaction and customer retention needs. While it’s natural for software companies to wrestle with resolving their own technical debt, most professionals recognize this is usually resolved slowly over time and only accomplished in small chunks as the business focuses primarily on growth.
Acquiring entities have growth needs – this is an investment. Even in the minority of cases when companies are bought purely to help silence the competition, the customer base and market recognition can’t be made to suffer – positive things still need to happen. That said, acquired companies are challenged to succeed for the reasons shared below:
- Integration Challenges – product or technical challenges, reporting, operations, financials and cultural differences are all potential difficulties that must be effectively managed.
- Overlapping Feature Sets – products addressing similar or identical needs can lead to uncertainty when it comes time to standardize or pick products to go to market with. This can lead to confusion across your customer base, which is never ideal.
- Customer and Talent Retention – not everyone likes to change and the risk of key people (customers included) leaving organizations because of M&A is always a possibility.
- Technology Incompatibilities – vastly different architectures, implementation styles, and technology stacks are incredibly difficult to harmonize in the pursuit of increased value propositions from new products. Often, they (at least temporarily) produce the exact opposite effect.
One key area that is so often overlooked by acquiring entities, despite robust due diligence efforts, is the identification of synergies or consistencies across adopted and implemented technology stacks and technology teams. Situations where entire technology stacks, architectural styles, core product and maintenance practices, deployment considerations, documentation, etc. are all different is very limiting when evaluating acquisition targets is concerned. Rather, finding ways to standardize across disparate technology stacks efficiently and cost-effectively is a worthy consideration. Traditional approaches to accomplish this were often extremely risky, time consuming and expensive. Aspen ESS (Aspen) was founded to address this specific challenge – and more. Welcome to Aspen’s Warp Drive Development Engine™.
Aspen Warp Drive Engine™
Source Code
Based on SOLID design principles, you’re provided with the foundational source code necessary to help quickly modernize your older software – directly atop your existing data. This code stack is clean, consistent and standardized, making it easy and fast to support and enhance. Further, the entire stack is intentionally secure throughout and architected to manage extensions to meet your growing needs. Last, the original design of our Engine helps future proof your applications, reducing the technical risk of an App Modernization project and significantly improving productivity – all in a few minutes!
APIs
We create all the APIs that your modern application needs in both REST and GraphQL formats. These APIs serve as the single gateway into the application and your data thereby tightening security, adding flexibility and scalability, fostering innovation and increasing your competitive advantages.
Business Logic
If present, business logic historically found in the database is extracted and placed into the new application tier where it belongs. Business logic found throughout the older source code can be assessed and brought over to the new application or, if desired, equivalent behaviors can be coded but likely done in a configurable and dynamic manner providing a much better experience and flexibility for your end Users.
Code Quality Health Checks, Automated Testing, Cybersecurity
Unit Tests are produced (with a minimum of 75% code coverage) and used by SonarQubeTM providing third-party validation as to the quality of the source code. Integration Tests are also produced and run against the entire REST API serving to ensure all API consumers will only ever produce managed, expected results. Last, OWASP Top 10 CyberSecurity scans are performed with all our Engine’s Job Runs.
User Interface
A “starter” React-based UI is included, giving you a functional baseline suite of pages (no need to start from scratch!). This UI works in conjunction with a complete set of Entity Models and an included component library consuming your new REST API providing you a tested and referenceable UI Framework to leverage as best suits your needs.
Potentially Sensitive Data Reporting
Most organizations don’t recognize how much of what they store in their application databases are storing “potentially sensitive data” as defined by HIPAA, CCPA, GDPR, FERPA, PCI and PII. We’ll show you exactly what you need to be aware of to help ensure you’re successfully managing this information on behalf of your customers.
CI/CD Deployment Packages
We provide you with a complete deployment package for Azure and AWS (coming soon!) immediately aiding in your Cloud Migration needs (if applicable) and improving productivity. Host your application wherever you prefer – this decision is yours to make as we don’t believe in “vendor lock”. This is, after all, your software.
Database Platform Migrations
If part of your App Modernization Roadmap also warrants upgrading to a newer DBMS, our metadata-based approach to Enterprise Software easily allows for this type of platform migration quickly and easily.
If you would like to learn more about our solutions, contact us at info@aspeness.com or visit our website at www.aspeness.com.
Todd Ingersoll
With over 20 years of experience serving multiple roles inside successful enterprise software and services organizations, Todd has been expressly interested in successfully overcoming app modernization challenges. His first-hand experience and dissatisfaction with the limitations and business impact of the traditional options of application modernization led him to create Aspen ESS. Aspen ESS was created to give organizations rapid, reliable, scalable, and extendable solutions to challenges with legacy software products and portfolios.
