October 26, 2017 Why Do You Need Vendor Neutrality in a Tech Partner? Seeking vendor neutrality in a tech partner with experts in many development practices helps companies evolve business and software strategies in parallel. Craig Knighton As they engage with more clients, technical teams synthesize the experience gained from building solutions for clients past into hard-earned. Honing such expertise is essential to the advancement of collective development teams and the software agencies they represent. The insight these teams gain through years of building software is highly valuable to future clients. But with increasing standardization in the software industry, more firms show their credentials up front by advertising an array of tech certifications in order to stand out from the crowd. 8 Questions to Ask Before Building Another App What is a Progressive Web App, and what new options do they provide smart businesses? However, business leaders that seek vendor neutrality in a software development partner end up with not only with solutions that scale with evolving business needs, but also multitalented teams whose capabilities grow with the business itself. Why Tech Vendors Can’t Keep Up Without Vendor Neutrality Technical certifications do benefit businesses — but only in the short run. The problem is, a certification has a shelf life. One that is considered important by developers or businesses leaders now may not be the certification of the moment in a month or a year’s time. Furthermore, maintaining both individual and organization-wide certifications is resource-intensive. Developers must devote considerable resources to pursuing courses, taking tests, and paying for the certification itself. The burden only grows when it comes to adhering to certification credentials indefinitely. When the tide inevitably shifts — whether due to a client’s needs or general IT trends — and a certification falls out of fashion, all that effort turns to waste. Even worse, the individuals and teams that focused their energy on a relatively narrow topic may find themselves bypassed by critical developments in a wider range of tech stacks. What Should Vendor Neutrality Look Like? Expertise Across Diverse Technical Practices From early on, we’re taught not to put all of our eggs in one basket. Businesses spread possible risks with their investments. Why should their choice in a tech vendor be any different? Development firms that don’t invest too heavily in gaining and maintaining high level certifications and instead cultivate expertise within and across a number of technical practices, make more capable partners. Software should be designed to meet a company’s immediate needs. But the most valuable the tech partner has the resources and individuals with the experience that can advise how and when new components from different stacks can enhance functionalities that support evolving business strategies. Is it Crucial to Have a Cloud Neutral Vendor? A cloud-enabled solution has as many iterations as there are businesses in the world. The ability to customize the cloud to meet specific needs is liberating for some, but potentially daunting for most business leaders. Companies like Amazon or Microsoft continue to release new capabilities in the cloud. As these capabilities increase, so does the risk entailed in businesses developing in the cloud blindly. How to Estimate Opportunities in Cloud Architectures How does cloud development control expenses and reliably scale application delivery? Why Advancements in the Cloud Should Make You Rethink Vendor Neutrality 59% of enterprise business leaders report using hybrid cloud solutions. Just as certain development languages can serve different ends in software, various cloud services can be combined and leveraged in a way that accomplished specific and important tasks within a company’s infrastructure. Business leaders can look internally to IT teams to patch together a cloud solution that works — or so they hope. But a vendor that has demonstrated advanced capabilities when leveraging different cloud services in a variety of business environments can help advise how best to combine capabilities from different sources to achieve the best possible outcomes. Better yet, a certified cloud vendor that also embraces a culture of vendor neutrality can make all the difference between a good effort and a winning solution that grows alongside the business. Cloud Neutral, but Cloud Certified: When Certification in the Cloud is a Must While many software development agencies can claim they have leveraged cloud services successfully, only a fraction can actually claim certified expertise. Amazon remains the dominant cloud services provider, routinely adding new services as it maintains 34% of the global public cloud services market. From its market share to its expanding capabilities, AWS continued domination shows no signs of slowing down. The variety and amount of clients attracted to its services speak to the value the company continues to deliver to businesses and their end users. The software agency that remains at the crest of the wave and maintains an AWS Consulting Partner certification offers businesses a crucial support system for using this powerful and rapidly evolving tool. How Vendor Neutrality Can Play Nicely With the Right Certifications By cultivating a partnership with a development firms that embraces vendor neutrality in its managed services, a company is better positioned to receive recommendations that map optimal tech stacks and cloud architectures to business realities. One or more certifications will not dissolve vendor neutrality. But certain certifications do allow teams to offer strategic insight that other teams simply can’t. The AWS Consulting Partner certification points to both the demonstration of and recognition for a mastery of AWS in business settings. AWS Consulting Partners have demonstrated a mastery of some of the newest technologies in a way that has been beneficial to past clients. Why Vendor Neutrality In a Tech Partner Can Grow Your Business Companies will always have hurdles to overcome. Before leaders overcome one, they should already consider what comes after. A software vendor that specializes in the tech stack of the moment will help a company to overcome one or two hurdles, but it will struggle to keep up with the business beyond that. Development firms that emphasize vendor neutrality and cultivate diverse technical practices are better equipped to continuously accommodate a growing businesses and its evolving technical needs. How Agile Distributed Teams Build Better Software Why businesses need remote Agile teams & questions to ask before starting. Simply put, they can look beyond an immediate issue to anticipate and eventually resolve looming problems. The more the practices in the company, the more tailored the solution for the client. The tech vendor that can rapidly spin up teams with diverse technical backgrounds as needed is built to grown alongside the changing businesses. During mergers and acquisitions, specialized firms and their limited ranges of capabilities may not make the cut with their inability to broaden their scope and meet new needs quickly. But the firm that lives a philosophy of vendor neutrality can begin to integrate legacy systems on expanded architectures or scale existing solutions more starting from day one of new business partnerships. Image source: Unsplash, Stefan Gessert Tags DevelopmentStaff AugmentationSupport Share Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Dawn of the Progressive Web Apps What is a Progressive Web App, and what new options do they provide smart businesses? Download Share Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Sign up for our monthly newsletter. Sign up for our monthly newsletter.