Software architecture

Architects are responsible for software quality. Together with the customer and all business and IT stakeholders, they create quality requirements for a new solution and develop robust criteria, benchmarks and scenarios for quality. Working with all those involved in creating a new solution, they lead and support the technical implementation to ensure that quality goals are reached. Our architects are certified, have a range of experience and use state-of-the-art methods in a software engineering process that creates high-value products and solutions.

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Agility is the key to success

Critical systems for your business must constantly react to internal and external changes. Successful IT solutions are flexible, scalable and modular. It must be possible to extend them quickly and easily. Prominent online giants demonstrate this flexibility at scale. Reactions to new competitive situations or customer wishes in the form of new features are sometimes put into production several times a day. To make that happen, you need an architecture that supports flexibility. And the architecture itself must continually evolve. These principles are also valuable for your company and, when adjusted for your size and sector, just as critical.

What is software architecture?

IT systems are always created and developed in a particular context. They mostly have a complex structure and complex interaction patterns with users and surrounding systems. Software architects look for a stable, robust, simple and yet adjustable structure for digital solutions and systems. During planning and design, extension and maintenance, the architect takes their lead from the quality requirements of the customer or product owner. The architect helps structure and modify the software, supporting the project with documentation, communication and facilitation. They place great value on clearly documenting the reasoning, principles and decisions, keeping them together as a fundamental element of the project or product.

Valuable experience

Our senior software architects bring extensive and valuable experience to the table.

Many years in a range of project roles
Software architecture and software engineering in a wide variety of projects
Extensive understanding of development and operation
Experience in dealing with software engineering teams
Open to new technical topics and methodologies
A reliable view of the often lengthy software lifecycle

Certified methodology

ARS provides extensive architecture consulting with iSAQB-certified architects. Are you looking to add new applications to your IT portfolio and facing complex challenges? Are you seeking future-proof measures to improve and modernise your existing systems? Do you need a neutral evaluation of your current architecture, to minimise possible future risks to your systems? ARS can help you not only to plan and implement the ideal software architecture for your requirements, but also to analyse and evaluate current systems and to introduce standardised procedures. An experienced team that is certified to the standards of the International Software Architecture Qualification Board (iSAQB) will advise you across all disciplines.

Real experience comes from life-long learning in a range of new situations. This applies especially to software architects. We’ve put together some of our experience in architecture in the area of cloud-native architectures and DevOps teams:

Our article on software architecture to download as a PDF

Our services

Architecture design

We work with stakeholders to design stable architectures that meet quality requirements. We document the architecture design with powerful, streamlined methods (arc42, C4...) Alternatively, we can use more complex frameworks and methodologies for architecture designs in regulated areas. We provide project support when the architecture is implemented and when it later continues to be developed. Our implementation support means you benefit not only from the design of a powerful architecture, but also from the knowledge that our architects bring to the process. We can also support and supplement your team with experienced software engineers with architecture skills if required.

Analysis and evaluation

We analyse your planned and existing software architectures and evaluate them based on standardised criteria (the architecture tradeoff analysis method (ATAM) and the cost benefit analysis method (CBAM)) by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. At the technical level, we evaluate the architectures based on software quality and criteria such as performance, modifiability, scalability and security. This depends on which criteria are most important to your stakeholders.

Digital platforms

If your company takes a new direction and pursues new business models, it’s often the case that you require more than just a single new solution. You’ll need a new platform as a foundation on which to implement new building blocks for your business with speed, flexibility and room to manoeuvre. Our architects help you design strategies for a new digital platform, advise you on the architecture of entire platforms and their technical implementation, and work with you on PoCs and pilot solutions to test their robustness and value for the future.

Cloud transformation

Our architects are very familiar with change processes. You can rely on them to ensure that cloud infrastructures – in your own data centre, in the public cloud or as a favourable combination of the two – and the workload transfer from, e.g., classic application servers to microservices, containers and orchestration are all a complete success. This requires talents who are system architects, software architects, cloud architects and experts in organisational changes and employee training.