Don't be hostage to your supplier

Many companies today use software that they are not happy with, but are unable to abandon. The app is not working as it should, the editing deadlines are shifting, communication with developers is hamstrung, and a change of supplier seems riskier than enduring. They tell themselves that no one else will understand their project, take over, or technically even manage it. Don't be afraid to name it: vendor lock-in. And it's a trap that even experienced companies fall into.

It doesn't usually start off dramatically. The project runs, somehow works, the relationship with the developers is a strange mix of habit and quiet discontent. Then there comes a time when you need a change, patch, or new feature, and suddenly you find that you don't have server accesses, the documentation either doesn't exist or nobody has seen it in the last three years, and all knowledge of the system lives solely in the heads of the people on the other side of the contract. You pay invoices even if you are not satisfied. You accept compromises that you would normally reject. And the digitalization that was supposed to move your business forward has actually become a drag.

At Koala, we specialize in what we call The Last Mile of Digitalization. It's that stage where technology ceases to be a pretty presentation and has to actually work for real users in real traffic. This is where it most often shows whether the contractor really did a good job or just handed over something that looks like cash. We take on projects exactly at this point when the result matters most and when there is no time for long experimentation.

We do not come up with the idea of rewriting everything from scratch

Every project has its own history. Sometimes you find it in Git, sometimes you reconstruct it from comments in the code, and occasionally you read it directly from Assembler, Fortran, or COBOL, which somewhere in the bowels of the system quietly runs to this day. Our developers navigate such conditions as naturally as an archaeologist on the site. We've gone through projects written in both Pascal and Delphi, in Basic as well as pure C and C++, and we know well that behind each such code there are years of decisions that had their logic at the time of its creation.

Therefore, we do not come with a shovel, but with a brush. First, let's understand what the system does and why it was built that way. Only then do we propose how to gradually transfer it to the world of modern technology so that the functions remain, the fragility disappears, and the result is sustainable for another ten years.

We don't need much to get started. Access to the repository, access to the production environment or an introductory workshop where we will discuss together what the system does and what it should do. The rest is our job.

Audit as the first step

After obtaining the accesses, we conduct an audit: we map the architecture, identify technical debt, uncover security risks, and evaluate the overall status of the code. The result is a clear message written in Czech, without marketing jargon, without hidden intentions. We'll just tell you where you stand. Based on this, we will jointly set priorities and suggest how to proceed so that the system is up and running at all times. Switching to a new supplier must not mean an outage for you or your customers.

Dependence on the supplier is not a necessity

A healthy relationship with a technology partner is that you as a client understand what you own, have access to everything that drives your business, and are free to decide who takes care of your system at any time. That's why we build especially on open source technologies. No proprietary solutions, no license dependencies, no code that only its author can read. The result of our work can be easily taken over by another contractor or your own in-house team, when you are ready for it. Not on the fact that the keys are held by someone else and you're just paying the rent.

If this article accurately describes your situation, you may not be alone in this. There is a way out. Write to us, we will be in touch and we will be happy to come to you.