Build vs Buy?

Build the innovation. Buy the commodities.

A classic evolution of maturing industries and markets is the rise of commoditization within the value chain. If there is limited value in making the ‘foundation,’ buy it from an optimized supplier, and move on/up to building higher-level value.

Homebuilders don’t make kitchen cabinets. Carmakers don’t build seats.

While the principles are sound, the application has been limited in the mobile app development market. This is precisely the value proposition Onymos provides.

Full-stack, off-the-shelf Features

Onymos provides a suite of full-stack Features that simplify foundational mobile app functions like Geo-location/Fences, Notifications, Access/Login, and more. These Features are so complete that developers simply include them in their app, configure the parameters, and move on to the next task. (Read Plugins vs Components).

Certainly, GitHub and others are awash in ‘plugins’ and code snippets. But Onymos Features are fully articulated, with a broad feature set and complete functionality.

It’s the difference between a carpenter watching a video on building a drawer and having an entire kitchen cabinet system delivered.

The average Onymos Feature has 1,000 hours of software engineering investment.
Plus Onymos provides ongoing maintenance.

For example, Onymos Access supports social login from Apple, Facebook, Google, plus OAuth from partners like Okta and Ping Identity, plus email/pwd system, plus more importantly all the data management/backend to support storing user credentials, accessing them, offering analytics and more.

Drop the Access Feature into an app and drop the mic.  Your work here is done.

Build the hero, buy the zero

Software engineers, by their very nature, are ‘can-do’ people who want to do their best work. But just because we can build something doesn’t mean we should build something.

All professionals know there are highly visible ‘hero’ jobs as well as the mundane, yet required, ‘zero’ tasks. Realistically, zero jobs are only recognized when they break or fail – there is no upside.

In today’s competitive market, having developers focused on hero capabilities, rather than being dragged into zero-type functionality, is crucial. With Onymos, there’s a viable option to buy the basics and get developers on to what they do best – be heroes and build innovation.

Conclusion

The Build vs Buy decision must be viable on several levels –

• Technical – The software features need to address customer requirements
• Implementation – The software features must actually reduce the amount of engineering effort required.
• Support – The features must reduce the ongoing support burden
• Business – The features need to be priced and packaged in a way that is aligned with the a product or usage-based model.

Onymos Features deliver on them all.