The ability for a software application to be modified is now viewed as a critical requirement for most organizations. This is largely due to the dynamic environment we face where response times must constantly shrink while quality and innovation move forward rapidly. These days, most software companies state that they are flexible and have “toolkits” available to modify their applications. We see the evolution of the industry in this direction as being a very good thing for the market.
However, it is also important in such an environment where most vendors claim such flexibility to differentiate between a toolkit and a true platform. For well over a decade, Aptify has provided what we call the Application Lifecycle Platform, which is a comprehensive solution for developing, deploying and maintaining(including upgrading) enterprise business applications. We at Aptify use our own Application Lifecycle Platform for 100% of the development of business applications. In contrast, a toolkit is a set of separate tools that is used only by a customer to change a vendor’s application. The vendor doesn’t typically use such a toolkit to actually build the base applications. The distinction is an important one – if you and the vendor use different tools, you will always have a limitation to what you can do.
In the Aptify world, there is no such difference, the platform we provide our clients is the same one we use to build the applications to begin with. Our customers leverage this platform day in and day out to build not only extensions to our apps, but to create entirely new business applications. Underscoring the power and flexibility of our technology, Aptify’s Application Lifecycle Platform is being used by a major independent software vendor to produce a complete ERP suite for the publishing vertical.
When you compare software solutions, if flexibility is important to you, make sure you ask this key question of each vendor: Is the toolkit/platform something that you internally use to build 100% of the proposed solution? If the answer is not an unqualified yes, consider carefully the limitations before moving ahead.