But Are You a Platform?

Funny how our obsession with buzzwords sometimes shoots us in the foot. While I’ve discussed this for specific tech spaces, this time, I’m going to point out a general trend that we’re currently experiencing. I will note up front that neither you nor I can stop it—I’m just here to raise awareness.

Currently, everything IT is a platform, and it smacks of resume padding. Your keycard system is probably “A platform to secure physical and virtual infrastructure across the entire organization, specializing in end-to-end security.” Even though you’re just going to buy it to secure (and, by extension, open) doors.

All joking aside, most of the time, your vendor is going to offer much more than you need, increasingly due to M&A activity, but it’s true for internally developed stuff, too. This works really well for them, because your current need is a gateway drug, and then they can cross-sell you the other 50 functionalities. It works okay for some customers who are looking to simplify their infrastructure and others who are looking for the proverbial “one throat to choke,” but honestly, for most of us, it is a waste of resources across the board.

Ask yourself, “What percentage of this product do I need?” then ask yourself, “How much of this functionality is already implemented in the 15 other platform solutions we have that now overlap with this vendor?” And finally, ask, “What is the possible unexpected overhead of implementing a platform where a tool will do?”

The goal for us is not to provide vendors with recurring revenue; it is to get the job done and keep complexity from forcing us to hire people to manage more of the menagerie.

I have mentioned the current trend of consolidation before—the more consolidation happens, the more your existing vendors will try to solve more of your problems. Sometimes, they will do an excellent job of it and shouldn’t be dismissed just because they’ve become a platform. Other times, it is purely a marketing ploy, and you should do an evaluation of both the market and competitors before jumping on board.

For the most part, I’m preaching to the choir. Most of you have the “What do we need? What do we have available but is underutilized? What do we need that’s new?” system down, but some of you don’t. Think of a toolshed where you have 15 digging tools, but you only dig post holes. You need a post-hole digger in your shed and probably a shovel (because everyone uses a shovel now and then). The rest? In the case of physical tools, you can keep them if you have spare room in the shed but don’t need them. In the case of IT infrastructure, you’re paying for them, paying to maintain them, and/or paying for resources to keep them running. So don’t. Buy what you need, and limit broad solutions to a couple of valued partners or spaces where the intersection of previously separate tech spaces provides value (some app security, for example, is super well-served by the platforming trend because all the formerly separate steps now share data for a more broad view of a given apps’ security that is deeper than current SIEM capabilities).

And keep rocking it. Imagine if you could get down to one of each tool you need and every team was an expert and each of those tools was best of breed … Okay, enough epic fantasy. Just try to minimize what you have to work on/with, and keep serving up the organization professionally to the world and employees.