When we started Arctir, we did so knowing that the journey would be complicated and involve a number of twists and turns. Slack started out as a video game company called Glitch, Twitter (now X) was a podcast app called Odeo, and Nintendo sold everything from collectible cards to rice cookers. If some of the most recognized businesses in the world experienced twists and turns (aka pivots) it was probably going to impact us as well.
Just like these iconic brands, we pivoted our focus this summer and have exciting updates to share. But first we want to share how we got here.
Software operations in most organizations are typically far from efficient. Silos and sprawl are the order of the day. Third-party estimates reaching over 250,000 applications in use within some companies, tens of thousands of people working in technical roles, and countless numbers of tools at their disposal. The typical person in a technical role spends more time fighting fires and navigating organizational toil than working on innovation or paying down technical debt. There is often no “golden path” to production. Bringing new ideas to market can take months to years.
That is a massive problem by itself, but it gets worse.
The average executive team often does not fully appreciate software as being core to their business, yet over the previous decades it has become clear that the success of a business is often directly attributable to the software estate that drives its day-to-day operations.
Shockingly, of over 100 earnings calls and press releases we reviewed, only 7 made mention of Software Operations as part of their discussions (excluding companies that sell software and/or address notable software incidents). Real estate, marketing, and various other elements of business are mentioned with regularity, yet almost none have the direct material impact or risk to the business that software does.
We believe that this is a symptom of software sprawl. The typical software estate is just far too complex for many to fully understand, and, as a result, it becomes difficult to discuss authoritatively.
When we began talking with customers earlier this year about what we were building a few things became clear:
- New software purchases would need a short time-to-value.
- Large scale software investments are on hold for most companies.
- Team efficiency is a key area of focus for most executives right now.
If we know there are large, systemic problems that will take a long time to solve, how can we deliver short-term ROI for our customers? How can we meet them where they are, helping solve short-term pain while setting them up for long-term success? How can we help all parts of the business make sense of their software estate?
Enter Platform Engineering, and enter Arctir into the Platform Engineering space. We believe that the emerging Platform Engineering mindset, tools and community represent the best long-term path to solving the disconnect between the code, people, and systems that comprise a modern software delivery organization.
We are excited to help our customers and community tackle this opportunity. In coming blog posts we are going to dive into what Platform Engineering is, some history and what Arctir is doing to help.
