Ten years ago, software systems usually consisted of a mix of off-shelf-software and custom software.
- Everything was installed in house.
- Security required setting up firewalls and restricting access to the computers connected to the network.
- Software typically didn’t have any kind of API, certainly not a web API, so data integrations were difficult.
Today, software systems still consist of a mix of off-shelf-software and custom software. However, off-the-shelf software now comes in the form of software-as-a-service.
- The cloud can host it, run it, and store it cheaper and better than we can do it ourselves.
- Web APIs are now ubiquitous.
- Security is still a challenge. In some ways, it’s even more difficult.
- Everybody is using data to drive their decisions.