Software and Platforms

What is changing

For a software company, engineering is the product. Growth exposes the shortcuts of the early years: a monolith that slows every release, a cloud bill rising faster than revenue, a security review a large customer will not wait for. We add capacity and experience without adding management overhead.

Investors now ask about efficiency as often as growth. Engineering leaders have to show where every hour and every dollar goes.

Customers expect AI features in the product, and each one raises questions about cost, quality and the data behind it.

Three shifts for software companies

Efficient growth
Cloud cost per customer has become a board measure. Architecture choices made in year one show up in the margin in year five.
AI in the product, responsibly
AI features have to be useful, affordable to run and honest about their limits, with the data behind them handled properly.
Enterprise readiness
Larger customers ask for audit reports, single sign-on, data residency and detailed logs before they sign. The roadmap has to make room.

By the numbers

Software, measured

35%: Average reduction in cloud cost per customer within six months of our platform engagements.
2x: Deployment frequency a year after we rebuilt delivery pipelines with client teams.
2 weeks: Typical time for a new KIASA team to ship its first change to production in a client's codebase.
52%: Share of budget the software leaders in our research spend keeping existing systems running, the lowest of any industry.

The maintenance dividend, KIASA research, 2026 (22 of the 140 engineering leaders surveyed lead software companies); KIASA delivery records, 2021 to 2026.

What we do

How we help software companies

Our engineers work in your repositories, your rituals and your on-call rota, and leave the codebase better documented than they found it.

Platform engineering
Internal platforms, paved paths and delivery pipelines that let product teams ship safely without waiting on anyone.
Cloud and platform engineering
Architecture and debt reduction
The monolith split where it hurts, and left alone where it does not, while the roadmap keeps shipping.
Application modernization
AI product features
AI features designed, evaluated and costed like any other part of the product, with quality measured before and after launch.
Artificial intelligence and data
Enterprise readiness
Single sign-on, audit logging, access controls and the evidence an enterprise buyer's security team asks for.
Cybersecurity
Product teams on demand
A complete team, from designer to engineer, that takes a part of the roadmap and ships it alongside your own people.
Digital product engineering
Technology due diligence
An independent read on a codebase, a team and a platform for investors and acquirers, in weeks rather than months.
Technology due diligence

A keyboard and a mug, in black and white.

Architecture

Breaking up the monolith while shipping the roadmap

Rewriting a product from scratch rarely ends well. The roadmap stops, the new version takes twice as long as planned, and customers wait for features that were promised.

We take the opposite route. We find the parts of the monolith that slow the most teams, draw a clear boundary around each and move them out one at a time. Releases continue throughout, and every step is small enough to undo.

See application modernization

Hands typing on a laptop at a wooden table.

Enterprise readiness

Ready for the security review that decides the deal

The first large customer usually arrives with a long questionnaire and a short deadline. Single sign-on, audit logs, encryption, an independent audit report: the gaps become the roadmap overnight.

We plan enterprise readiness as product work, with the controls built once and the evidence produced automatically. The next questionnaire takes days to answer, and the answers are true.

See cybersecurity

Our work in action

What we have built with software companies

What we think

Reading for software leaders

See all insights

Our leaders