Summary: This article shares how leveraging nearshore software development expertise can help accelerate open source software integrations
Since its founding in the 1990s, open source software (OSS), forms of programming code created by software developers and offered freely to anyone who wants to modify and build upon it, has democratized software development.
The benefits are great. Companies can get a jumpstart on their software development projects, by leveraging free code, that they can customize and optimize for their core applications. According to an article in The Week, “Gartner’s 2021 Hype Cycle for Open Source Software (OSS), found that more than 70 percent of enterprises will increase their IT spending on OSS through 2025.” Today’s financial uncertainty, cybersecurity challenges and a continuing tech talent shortage all are contributing to its growth.
Building Better Payments Solutions with Open Source
Especially for finance and payments markets, which are becoming increasingly competitive, offering customers mobile and web-based billing and payment options that are flexible and convenient can boost the user experience. Using open source software to build these solutions is an affordable way to create scalable solutions that provide greater flexibility and options.
Many payments providers and ecommerce sites rely on the open source platform from Kill Bill, for their billing and payment solutions. However, the real power of Kill Bill lies in its ability to let companies build their own business logic on top of it to create a customized billing and payments solution. Building plugins (or application programming interfaces) allows them to modify the features and functionality of Kill Bill or integrate with third-party vendors and various payment gateways. Plugins enable them to turn open source software into a custom-tailored solution. OSS can give them a very good working solution, but plugins are what makes it their own.
The Challenges to Making Open Source Software Your Own
Developing plugins to connect to a payment gateway or enterprise system, or add new functionality to Kill Bill or other OSS solutions, however, is not always as simple as it sounds. It requires companies to write custom code, but it also requires validating that it works end-to-end, and ensuring that it maintains security standards and regulatory compliance.
In today’s environment, many companies simply don’t have the in-house technical staff to bring an OSS solution over the finish line. And if they have the talent, they often need their technical team to focus on the core business, or troubleshooting and supporting enterprise infrastructure.
Many of Kill Bill’s OSS customers – in the payments marketplace and other businesses – have turned to Wovenware to expand the integrations and capabilities of the platform. Consider some of the benefits:
- Drastically reduced timelines – so that the software is up and running within weeks. Wovenware is able to accomplish this based on having expert software developers who deeply understand the Kill Bill platform and leverage best practices gained from the many integrations developed for Kill Bill customers.
- Kill Bill Partnership – Wovenware and Kill Bill have been working together since 2017. Our Kill Bill partnership and relationship to the Kill Bill founders and development team allow us to tackle even the most complex integration projects successfully.
- Trusted business partner – Wovenware considers integration projects not just as one-off projects, but as business partnerships. We work with customers to ensure the solution is meeting customer needs and can add new plugins as needed.
- Reduced costs – As a nearshore service provider, Wovenware is able to offer costs that are lower than mainland U.S., but on par or exceeding the capabilities and expertise.
- Lower risk – Even free software is too costly if doesn’t meet your unique customer needs. Wovenware listens closely to your needs and ensures that OSS solutions are tailored to meet them, while complying to all industry regulations and standards.
A Committed Approach to OSS Optimization
It’s not just Kill Bill OSS, Wovenware takes the same commitment to OSS optimization for a variety of applications in different industries. Before writing a single line of code, the Wovenware development team works with each customer to understand the functionality, business context, use cases and technical design required for integration projects. We make sure we have a firm grasp of the OSS documentation and code anytime we modify and extend it.
When it comes to open source software, free is great, but custom-designed is even better. By building new features and functionality to make OSS your own, many leading companies have been able to cost effectively adapt and deploy world-class software that helps them lead their markets and drive business growth.
