Old School Future-Proofing Applies, Now More Than EverBy Greg Dow – Sales Manager, Crimson Transaction Technologies

Flexibility in architecture is the key to future-proofing. It allows increased capabilities with reduced support costs. This is nothing new. Architects, and engineers have been thinking this way since the beginning of human history. As the rate of progress explodes, software designers should have the same discipline and forethought to future-proof their creations. Allow me to use two historical examples of future-proofing to demonstrate my point.

New College Dining Hall, Oxford

The picture above is the Prince Edward Viaduct. It spans a valley 400 meters across by 40 meters deep. It was designed in 1912 with mass transit in mind; the upper deck accommodated electric trams and a lower deck allowed future rail lines. It opened in 1918.

It was not until 1966, forty eight years later, that the lower deck was used for a subway line. The forethought eliminated the need for a second structure. This example, is of public works and transportation, rather than IT, but the point is that decisions made in the 1910s saved millions of dollars in the 1960s.

The Scoria™ Retail Suite, by Crimson Transaction Technologies, is designed for flexibility too. It was first released in 2003. The primary focus was to build a solid and flexible architecture that would allow unique customer requirements to be satisfied without adding code branches. Parameters and settings for each line of business are applied without the need to recompile. Parameter changes can be made locally using in house resources without extra expense. Data Interfaces can be made to any number of lines of business’ information systems using common interfaces.

Over a decade later, the Scoria™ Retail Suite is on version 1, sub version 25 and there is still one single code base across Crimson’s entire client base – no branches. The flexibility built in to the architecture future-proofs the customer investment