What is Sticky Software? | Tech News

One thing should be immediately clear: it’s crowded. While some softwares aim to create an “all-in-one” solution, the market has allowed specialized “point solutions” to gain prominence. The idea of a point solution is that businesses buy the best software for each individual problem. Of course, this is only possible because they can integrate with one another.

To be fair, integrations can be great for buyers. After all, more available integrations means more power and flexibility.

But integrations also make products within a software stack more difficult to replace.

Firstly, when your solution has to integrate with multiple other softwares, it limits the available alternatives. And building those integrations with a new software introduces a whole other level of complexity. In a way, it’s another form of an initial investment.

But secondly, integrations can help mediocre software survive. As long as it fills a need within the stack, a second-rate software can be used to simply support a better solution.

What to look for: be wary of your software stack becoming too complex. Consolidating software vendors should be the default unless there’s a good reason to go the route of point solutions. Recognize when you’re “stuck” with a solution because it fits in your stack.