If it’s decided that a new software solution needs to be created to serve the needs of a company, then one of the first things you must decide on with your development partner is the technology that’s going to be used for the project. There are dozens of various aspects to think about during this process, but some of the most important ones are as follows.
Reliability, flexibility, and longevity
With almost every application, there’s an expectation that is must work exactly as long as the company requires. This, in turn, means that the technology chosen to create the application must be able to keep up with the times – it must be able to do everything necessary today, but also tomorrow and in five years’ time.
In addition to technical resilience, it is worth thinking about scalability: currently, the application will be used by four people, and it must be able to do three things, but maybe in a few years it must be able to serve a million people and serve a thousand different needs.
Another crucial point to consider is whether the platform can serve the needs of the company. Some options may seem interesting, but if they are not designed with your specific use cases in mind then there’s not much use of them.
Therefore, before choosing any platform, it is worth your while to find out who is behind the technology and whether it is a passing trend that will disappear in a matter of months or a technology that can be used for years to come.
Can you find skilled people?
As important as the technology itself are the people who know how to use it. It is common to find technologies that can do everything you need, but only then find out that there’s only a handful of people who are able to use it at a level you desire. This can lead you to a situation where it is almost impossible to find another person or development partner once the original developer is no longer involved with the project.
Therefore, before committing to a technology, you should familiarize yourself with the market situation: how much resources are available and whether the development can be sustainable.
The wider ecosystem
Lastly, it’s worth looking at the bigger picture: if you’re dedicated to any platform, it’s worth your while if you can use it for as many of your development needs as possible. If you choose a separate niche product for each application, you may soon find yourself in a situation where you need to turn to a different partner for every minor change for every piece of software.
Therefore, if possible, it would be worthwhile to choose a platform that can serve your front-end needs, fulfill the more important back-end requirements, and work flawlessly with web, mobile, and cloud applications.
All of this has led to the popularity of .NET
With all of the above in mind, it’s probably no wonder why the .NET platform, created by Microsoft, has become increasingly popular year after year: it does everything you need and then a little more.
But let’s take a closer look at what .NET offers.
It provides longevity
.NET was created by Microsoft, and it continues to evolve to this day. This has created a situation where company management and development teams can be relatively confident that if you choose .NET today, you can use it tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and in ten years’ time, without worrying about the loss of support.
It’s also important to keep in mind that Microsoft is just not supporting .NET, but new features are constantly introduced, thus providing companies with the needed assurances that their products can be kept up to date and even be improved upon as the market needs change.
The first version of .NET was released in the early 2000s, and in the end of last year, Microsoft pulled the covers from .NET 5.0.
Abundant resources
Since .NET has been around for so long, there is also a large number of people on the market who understand this technology – there are dozens of developers working for Uptime alone who understand the features and more complex nuances of .NET.
Compared to the more niche technologies, that only a handful of people can use, .NET is a relatively safe choice for creating business-critical products – no matter what happens, after a few phone calls you can find a developer or a development partner who can keep the system running and provide you with any updates needed.
Long-term use has also created a strong community around .NET, which in turn means that various problems can be solved relatively quickly – you can be more than sure that a few years back someone had the same issue, posted their question on a forum, and got the answers they were looking for. Whenever this issue pops up again, developers can find the same answer without wasting valuable time.
.NET grows with your company
One of the big selling points of .NET is its reach: it is the ideal choice for almost every stage of development, and you can be sure that it will not become a bottleneck when it comes to scalability.
As such, it shouldn’t come as a shock that .NET is being used by small start-ups to create their first MVPs, but also by large companies with billions of euros in turnover, where downtime, scalability issues, and the lack of resources is not an option.
Near infinite use cases
When talking of .NET, one also can’t ignore its range. Services based on .NET range from web services and mobile apps, all the way to sophisticated cloud solutions and large back-end systems. The same is true in the creation of .NET applications: it doesn’t matter if you use Linux, Windows, or Mac, .NET works fine everywhere.
This in turn means that one technology can be used to meet almost all the needs of a company, which in turn creates a cost-effective and easy to manage development environment.
However, should it turn out that .NET does not meet your company’s development needs, there are several other well-known alternatives on the market, such as Java, PHP, and Node. You can be sure that your development partner will help you choose the most suitable technology during the initial consultations.
Want to see what we’ve created using .NET? See our work here.
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