Platform Productisation

Platforming (see also Computing Platform [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_platform] ) is a structured approach to software development that organizes discrete software components into related functions in a layered architecture of common services, with the goal of writing code once for maximum reuse and ease of maintenance.

Productisation is an approach to creating and consolidating technology assets into Organization Specific Platforms (OSP) that are leveraged across the enterprise to build and assemble new products and services.

Platforming introduces a series of proven best practices from mature industries such as automotive (see also Automobile Platform [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_platform] ) and manufacturing. For instance, an automotive manufacturer attains significant efficiencies and economies of scale today by building several product lines on top of a single shared platform and by reusing 80% of common assets across these product lines.Compared to other mature industries, the software industry has historically suffered from egregious inefficiencies, cost over-runs, and late product releases.

While searching for greater efficiencies for the last 30 years, software developers have evolved their solutions from monolithic, hardware-dependent legacy systems to the present day three-tier, service oriented architecture. These innovations facilitate a more modular approach to software development and make software platforming achievable in most IT environments, even those dominated by legacy code.