RSR does not do vendor comparisons. On one level, that decision locks us out of a lucrative market (some might say an extortion market, but that is a topic I will wait until you buy me a drink to expound upon). But we have very good reasons why we don’t compare vendors, and frankly, Aptos’s Engage User Conference was a reminder of many of those reasons, as well as an opportunity for me to add one more to the list.

For those who have not been keeping score, Aptos has had a long and winding road, filled with many challenges that might have ended companies that were not as tough or passionate. Today, they are a modern enterprise solution for retail, in a market where few such solutions still exist, especially as a stand-alone company focused on the retail industry.

What holds the company together, and makes it stronger, is its culture. That’s an easy thing to say, and a lot of people might roll their eyes, but the longer I’ve been in the business world, the more I realize and believe that the strength of a company’s culture – the ties that hold people together beyond the logo on the paycheck – is enormously important. It’s the third rail that either powers everything and makes the trains run on time, or it’s that thing that kills you when you touch it. And Aptos’s third rail is humming strong.

They are living proof of why RSR does not do vendor comparisons. One, we feel like the market is a better judge of whether the solutions work than we are – trust me, it’s pretty easy to dazzle an industry analyst with a demo that is bailing wire and chewing gum. I’ve sat on both sides of that table. Ultimately, it’s much more important whether customers stick with a vendor, and decline to sue a vendor, and not have public, painful spats about breach of contract or deciding to terminate a project 7-figures in without delivering any value.

One of the most important reasons why we don’t do vendor comparisons is because purchasing software should not be viewed as a transaction. It’s a partnership. Especially as technology evolves with cloud solutions and microservices architectures and the API economy, you’re not just buying a pile of code and then kicking the vendor out. Retailers are buying services more than software these days, and that means they better love the people they’re doing business with. They better trust that the vendor is looking ahead to the future and investing in ways that will help drive to that future.

But what about capability? I can hear you asking the question already. At some point, someone has to deliver something that helps a business get things done. Theoretically, Aptos, a smaller company, could be considered at a disadvantage compared to the behemoths in the space in that regard. What about predictive analytics? Or optimization algorithms, or artificial intelligence and machine learning?

My answer to you is my newest reason for confirming, even more so than ever before, that “It’s not a transaction, it’s a partnership “: microservices. This is the promise of Service-Oriented Architecture, now actually being delivered in the marketplace. Aptos has its own strategy there, as do many other technology companies. I don’t know, myself, at what point you’re trading overhead for flexibility – at some point, these services could end up getting so small that the overhead you need to string them together becomes prohibitive just from the perspective of human understanding and management of what you actually own. But I guess machine learning will help us overcome that.

In the meantime, microservices is driving a very old argument in a whole new direction. It’s that argument about best of breed vs. integrated solution. At some point, someone within the company looks at what’s “in ” the integrated solution and says, “Yeah, it’s good, but it’s not good enough for what I need. ” That is usually the beginning of the end of the promises of integrated end-to-end – I need custom development, or I need a best of breed solution but no one in the company is willing to fund the integration needed to bring that best of breed fully into the enterprise. One view of the customer, one view of inventory, one single version of the truth is sacrificed in the name of functionality.

With microservices, theoretically, that argument is moot. The definition of “good enough ” is moot. The definition of “best of breed ” is moot. This is the promise of the API economy. If I buy a point of sale solution, and I point all of its service calls to my eCommerce platform so that they share the same customer database, the same transaction log, the same pricing source, what difference does it make how rich that functionality is within the point of sale? If I decide I need a more complex and capable promotion engine to deliver in-store promotions at a level I would never dream of enabling through eCommerce, why couldn’t I just point those service calls to some other solution? It could be developed by a company that is 8 guys and a partner certification. It could be developed by a competing promotions solution or even a competing point of sale. This is the true promise of microservices.

Aptos, like many other companies, is embarking on a journey down the road of microservices. The company is investing not just to stay modern, but to help its customers stay ahead of the future – an omnichannel future that for many feels like it’s bearing down on them like a tsunami. And what I saw at the event was a community of customers, engaged in a partnership, ready to embrace that future together. In an age of instant gratification and next quarter’s performance, that was impressive to see.