Organizations are torn between two approaches to software architecture. On the flip side, all-in-one (AiO) suites aim to answer every need of your organization on a unique platform. On the other hand, best-of-breed (BoB) solutions, the leading pinpoint solutions among their likes, aim to answer specific needs.

Agility, flexibility, and reactivity are now the leitmotivs of all companies that want to grow fast and surpass their counterparts.

As IT began to consumerize, following the evolution of customer apps, user experience shifted similarly. Employees wanted the same experience as downloading the app they wanted on their smartphones. SaaS was developed to deliver narrow, targeted, innovative capabilities better, faster, and cheaper than its monolithic competitors to meet this need.

Today, we manage hundreds of SaaS applications, tools, and data services in modern enterprises. But do companies want to reconsider the old monolithic, integrated software platforms?

At Mindflow, we strongly believe that BoB (Best of Breed) solutions are the way to go for many reasons, while AiO (All-in-One) solutions are destined to be surpassed. Although there are drawbacks, we are confident that orchestration and automation tools, such as SOARs in security, are ideal for mitigating these as we showcase our expertise.

Why the All-in-One era is over!

Bundles may appear attractive to an organization willing to upgrade its system in one catch or uniformize the software architecture with a suite of products from the same vendor. Take Microsoft, for example; when you subscribe to Office 365, you can access Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Teams, and many other applications.

Bundles sound attractive because they can be deployed across an organization simultaneously. However, with bundles, employees must rely on its products, regardless of their adequacy to the task they need to achieve.

Ultimately, it results in using apps that aren't sharp enough for the purpose.

Also, if your teams are tied to inappropriate product suites, they could use other tools they feel are more appropriate. You will face risks described as shadow IT that can seriously hamper your organization's security or the overall coherence of your software architecture.

The bundle path can also make your company vulnerable to threats since flaws in one suite product can be present across every tool.

Moreover, it may constrain your innovation ability as you wait for vendors to release new versions and features.

Let's compare the global case against concentration in the economy with the consensus as of today. The growing concentration of market power allows dominant firms to exploit their customers and squeeze their employees, whose bargaining power and legal protections are being weakened. As a result, monopolistic organizations tend to favor increasing their profits and rent rather than fostering further innovation.

As a result, relying on a single enterprise software provider may expose you to face price increases. Being dependent on a single provider's products can become a technical handicap. The software vendor could fail to keep up with the market and thriving pinpoint solutions.

As a general rule, we think that choosing brand and integration over functionality is a mistake. Even if the overall cost could be less, you can't give up your agility or flexibility to reduce costs or comply with corporate strategy. Creating an architecture that encourages innovation and offers the best user experience should drive every organization's choice between AiO and BoB.

How can automation overcome best-of-breed solutions' limitations?

Uncontrolled BoB can decrease productivity

Instead of affording a bundled suite from a vendor that pretends to cover every need, an organization should adopt specialized solutions from different vendors to optimize performance and address specific points or to exactly meet the needs of certain tasks particular to the company or sector. This guarantees that employees use the best solution for each job function and favors agility, flexibility, and reactivity.

However, when discussing building your architecture around BoB solutions, some argue that the following disadvantages seriously hamper your organization's performance, which leads you to choose AiO over BoB.

Such an approach would mean that large enterprises must deal with multiple systems, databases, and vendors. Contract lifecycle management would also require more time and agents to manage all the vendor relationships. Overall, the cost of ownership can be significant, especially for Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs).

Integrating third-party tools could be time-consuming and challenging, especially for smaller organizations lacking technical know-how, workforce, or infrastructure. Inadequate integration could also result in a lack of data protection and redundancy. Intensive staff training could also enhance productivity with each tool.

Enter automation and orchestration

At first, affording a BoB approach seems complicated, as it involves working with multiple vendors that all have their logic and pricing. But we're saying that when done successfully, organizations can combine all their BoB technologies into one fully integrated system without all the enumerated struggles listed above.

As we said in a former article about tool sprawl, the problem isn't the accumulation of tools but rather the control and connectivity between them. Thus, we think the solution to BoB's disadvantages would be combining your software architecture with an automation and orchestration tool. This would enable users to federate the connections between your apps from one platform. For instance, it eases the burden of connecting your favorite mail to your internal messaging apps or your Dropbox. 

Automating the interactions between the apps will make your teams' lives easier. Also, such an approach would ease the management because it would help them keep the different apps upgraded, centralize user management, and facilitate tool-stack monitoring. In sum, maximizing the uses of each tool thus increases the initial investment and productivity. 

Best of Breed + SOAR = Higher Performance

Handpicking pinpoint applications according to your needs is a better way to build your architecture than relying on a preformatted platform, where all the tools are designed to suit a greater audience. With their intuitive design, BoB apps are often quicker to deploy and more accessible for end-users to adopt than bundles. This lowers the barriers to operation and thus delivers value quickly.

Choosing BoB apps is also about choosing agility and reactivity from the provider. Laser-focused on a single problem, providers are likelier to stay afoot of the latest and most modern technology. This way, your teams are prime beneficiaries of innovation in their sector, contrary to AiO users, where large companies favor profits instead of staying at the edge of innovation. When committing to a bundle, we risk being locked into a system that isn't fully tailored to our needs or becomes outdated quickly. Handpicking helps your teams feel confident they're using the best tools possible and a better overall user experience.

Also, BoB apps are designed to adapt and be flexible, and they often are the first to offer a service to answer new or laser-focused needs. For instance, Zoom outperformed every solution part of AiO suites when COVID-19 hit the world last year.

A BoB approach gives multiple advantages to SMBs. First, it allows them to start small and expand their stack alongside their growing business. SMBs sometimes only need software for limited amounts of time or specific projects. Second, BoB makes it easier for them to find a suitable solution by avoiding committing to a full suite of products for the long term.

Finally, BoB apps and orchestration tools result in a highly flexible and integrated environment, allowing your teams to connect multiple systems for more efficient workflows.

Conclusion

Here at Mindflow, we think people deliver their best when they can choose the best tools to achieve their work. Chaining them in bundles hampers their potential. We don't believe in solutions that pretend to answer all the specific needs a particular enterprise faces. We also don't believe in bundles' capacity to stay afoot with innovation. 

We live in a fast-changing world where agents must adapt quickly, be flexible, and find laser-sharp solutions when they must. That's why we think the future is Best of Breed.

This isn't to say that we're unaware of the disadvantages of best-of-breed —the exact opposite. That's why we promote best-of-breed coupled with a SOAR in cybersecurity, our field of expertise, and beyond, wherever adaptability and flexibility are essential for prosperity.