As a company that competes with large established incumbents, the constant race to innovate preoccupies me on a daily basis. More specifically, I am troubled by how fast our platform grows. Yes, I know it sounds counter intuitive, but my concerns are founded by the perception of quick pace of technological advancements, specifically how fast would my own brand-new platform be considered legacy. I have had to deal with the pains of legacy software for most of my professional life, and it has become apparent to me that something needed to be done. Regression is one of the words I dread daily. What will be the unforeseen effect of making one change in the platform on other parts of the platform. How inflexible would our platform become as we add functionality and clients?

Let’s first review a few simple yet important facts about building technological platforms:

First, we will never know the future. By that I mean that even the most brilliant of futurists don't have a level of certainty that could be trusted for a long-term prediction. Like many other facets of our lives, we have no real vision on cases in which breakout ideas kill even the newest of current technologies. For example, let’s take Blockchain and the immense hype around the impact this technology could have on our daily lives. If we wanted to predict its adoption or implementation into a ubiquitous technology, we could say that in the near term (let’s call it a decade) the technology will be implemented across industries providing some of the promised benefits. However, what if Quantum Computing leaps forward in its abilities, would that be a replacement for Blockchain? When?

Second, you can't pick the winner early enough in the game. From stocks to fantasy football, I have been terrible at picking winners, but that does not mean I don't participate in the market or play with my friends. What it means is that you have to plan how to deal with both the upside and the downside of these bets.

So, what do I think is the solution for this problem? Hive, Open, Distribution (The HOD formula). All words relate to how software should and will be built in the future (basically now because I don't believe in long term predictions...). The best way to gain new solutions to a problem is to have more people trying to solve it. The best way of making sure your platform is adopted is to make it open. The best way to do this in an affordable way is to use a distributed mindset. Companies that rely heavily on a base of legacy software cannot adapt in an affordable and rapid manner. Distributed computing, programming, and problem solving is the way to unchain your company from Legacy.