Why GTSuite

Software that cannot keep up

Companies rarely outgrow their management software because it lacks features. They outgrow it because changing it is slow. An extra field on an order, a different approval rule, one more column in a report: each request turns into a quote, a place in a queue and a release date. By the time the change arrives, the business has already worked around it.

The two usual escape routes each carry a price. Packaged software asks you to run your company the way the package expects, and the parts of your process that make you competitive are exactly the parts it cannot accommodate. Custom development gives you what you asked for, then charges you again for every later request, because each one means a developer, a build, a deployment and a test cycle.

The question that matters is not what your software can do today. It is what it costs you to change it tomorrow.

Applications made of definitions, not code

GTSuite starts from a different premise: an application is data. Pages, fields, layouts, validation rules, database statements, menus, permissions and translations are all definitions held in a database. At runtime a generic client reads those definitions and builds the running application from them.

There is no code generation step and no per page programming. A screen is a set of definitions; once they are saved and published, the application serves it. For the large majority of changes this removes the build, the deployment and the release window entirely.

The definitions are edited in the Designer, a desktop application built for the purpose. It is where the work happens: you describe the page, the data behind it and the behaviour you want, then publish.

What changes in practice

The effect compounds. When a change is cheap, it gets requested, and the software follows the business instead of restraining it.

Who this is built for

GTSuite is aimed at companies that fall between the two available options: too particular for packaged software, too small to carry an enterprise suite and the consultancy that comes with it. Manufacturing, trading, distribution and service businesses where the process really is specific and the specificity is the point.

The usual rule is inverted. Elsewhere, the more particular your process, the more you pay. Here, particular is the normal case.

What sits underneath

For readers who will look at the stack before anything else:

• Server: Node.js, exposing your data and the application definitions over a documented API.
• Client: Angular and Ionic, one generic application that renders any page from its definitions, in a browser and on mobile.
• Your business data: stays in a standard relational database of your choosing, Oracle or PostgreSQL among others, in tables you can read, query and back up with your own tools.
• No proprietary component licences: the stack is open source, so there is no per seat cost attached to the technology itself.

This also settles the lock in question honestly. Your data is in your database, in a form any developer can read. The definitions are rows in tables, not a compiled binary.

Already running

GTSuite is not a prototype looking for a first installation. The platform grew out of systems that have been in production for years and are still in daily use, across three quite different worlds: accounting information published to the people who need to read it, district heating measurement and billing, and textile laboratory and wool trading operations, including one system running well over 150 forms.

Those installations are what set the bar: anything the platform could not express without custom code got fixed in the platform.

See it working

The most useful thing we can tell you about GTSuite is not on this page, it is in the demo. Confirm an email address and you get access to a live system you can use and change, to the technical documentation, and to a set of guided exercises that walk you through building real pages from scratch.

It costs an email and an afternoon.