Build vs. Buy: The Ultimate Guide to Choosing an Incident Management Solution

Introduction 

Would you rather have an Incident Management system custom-built to your exact specifications, potentially costing more time and resources, or an off-the-shelf solution that's ready to deploy but might not fit all your unique needs?

Decision makers in companies often face this critical decision. And, that’s the debate of the day! 

Let’s explore and decode the decision of building vs. buying an Incident Management software. By the end of this blog, you might finally resolve the dilemma and reach a conclusion. Regardless of the outcome, you’ll definitely be wise to know the pros and cons of both your options.

Outages are costly. A whopping 54% of data centers surveyed by Uptime Institute in 2023 reported that their most recent major outage cost them over $100,000, with a staggering 16% exceeding $1 million. No wonder it’s time to prioritize this aspect of your IT operations which, quite frankly if compromised, can have serious consequences on your brand value and customer experience. That’s something no business big or small gambles upon.

Each company has its unique approach to Incident Response and addressing high-priority incidents. While an in-house tool tends to cater to customized processes, a market-sourced Incident Management tool provides standardized workflows and features tailored to optimize Incident Response.

Should You Build Your Own Incident Management Solution?

The decision to build versus buy an Incident Management solution can be complex. While building a custom solution might seem like a quicker path initially, it's crucial to consider the long-term implications. Here's a breakdown of the key factors to consider:

Why Build?

1. Procurement Hurdles 

Sometimes, budgetary approval might lie outside the DevOps team's control, even though the need for the tool is clear. Building an open-source solution can appear as a faster workaround compared to the potentially lengthy procurement process. However, this is an internal communication and approval issue, not a technical one. Custom solutions often lack long-term support and scalability.

2. Valid Considerations

There are legitimate reasons to consider building your own solution, including:

• Real or Perceived Unique Requirements: Carefully analyze your needs. Research industry standards and competitor solutions to identify if your requirements are truly unique. Is there a chance your needs could be addressed by existing platforms with minor adjustments?
• Security and Privacy Concerns: Evaluate your security and privacy concerns. Can these concerns be mitigated by a pre-built solution's data security practices? Often, pre-built vendors invest heavily in robust security measures, exceeding the resources of an internal development team.

3. Cost

While the upfront cost of a pre-built solution might seem high, it's essential to factor in the long-term costs associated with building your own:

• Ongoing Maintenance: Maintaining and updating a custom solution requires ongoing development resources.
• Feature Enhancements: Adding new features to your custom solution requires additional development effort.
• Opportunity Cost: Consider what the developer(s) could be working on instead of building a custom solution.
• Knowledge Retention: Building your own solution creates a dependency on the developer's knowledge. If they leave, valuable institutional knowledge can be lost.

Read More: Incident Response Tools: Key Considerations & Best Practices

The Case for Pre-Built Solutions

‍Pre-built Incident Management solutions offer several advantages:

• Reduced Development Time: Leverage existing, well-tested functionality, minimizing development time and resources compared to building from scratch.
• Ongoing Support: Benefit from ongoing vendor support and updates, including new features and security patches.
• Scalability: pre-built solutions are designed to scale with your organization's needs.
• Focus on Core Business: Free internal development resources to focus on your core business objectives.

Integration Challenges

‍One of the biggest weaknesses of building your own Incident Management solution is integration. Successful in-house built Incident Management platforms boast robust integration libraries. These integrations connect your platform to various sources (applications, infrastructure) and distribution channels (collaboration tools). This seamless flow of data facilitates efficient Incident Management. 

Building Integrations: Time & Expertise

‍Building integrations is a resource-intensive endeavor. Developers need to invest significant time learning and coding against new APIs. While a custom solution might only integrate with a select few tools relevant to your current needs, challenges arise when those APIs change:

1. Missed Functionality: Updates to APIs can leave your custom solution incompatible with new features offered by the integrated tool.
2. Platform Breakage: Incompatibility with updated APIs can even render your entire Incident Management platform inoperable.

Open Source Limitations

‍Open-source projects often lack the resources to keep pace with frequent API updates or develop new integrations. This can lead to:

1. Outdated Functionality: Your custom solution might rely on outdated integrations, hindering access to new functionalities offered by integrated tools.
2. Slow Response to Breakages: If an existing integration breaks due to API changes, your developer, already occupied with other tasks, would have to prioritize fixing the issue, potentially delaying other development efforts.

Evolving Needs

‍As your team scales and requirements change, the tools you need to integrate with might evolve as well. Building a custom solution often lacks the flexibility to adapt to these ongoing changes.

The Pre-Built Advantage

‍Custom Incident Management solutions address these integration challenges by:

• Pre-built Integrations: They offer a wide range of pre-built integrations, saving you development time and resources.
• Ongoing Maintenance: Vendors actively maintain integrations, ensuring compatibility with updated APIs and new functionalities.
• Scalability: pre-built solutions are designed to integrate with a growing array of tools as your needs evolve.

By leveraging a pre-built solution, you can avoid the integration burden and focus on what matters most - effectively managing your incidents.

The Bottom Line In This Case

‍Building a custom Incident Management solution might seem tempting initially, but carefully weigh the long-term implications. Pre-built solutions often offer a more cost-effective and sustainable approach, allowing your team to focus on what matters most - delivering exceptional products and services.

Building a Custom Solution: When Might It Be Considered?

‍While commercial or pre-built Incident Management solutions offer significant advantages, there are a few niche scenarios where building a custom platform based on open-source projects might be considered:

1. Highly Specialized Use Cases

In rare instances, an organization might require a highly specialized solution for a very specific, niche scenario. These organizations often already have a vendor-provided Incident Management software in place for their broader environment. The custom solution would then serve a focused purpose, potentially integrating with the main platform's API for data exchange.

‍Read More: Streamline Incident Resolution with Squadcast’s Outgoing Webhooks

2. Alerting for Non-Core Operations

Another consideration is for alerting used in contexts outside traditional application or infrastructure support. For example, such alerting might be used for collaboration or product management purposes. Here, it could be beneficial to segment this use case from the mission-critical Incident Management system by creating a more lightweight, custom solution. This approach could be suitable for teams with extensive customization needs around application usage data. Imagine receiving alerts when a newly launched feature is used, or monitoring performance KPIs after new infrastructure is deployed.

‍Read More: Manage Different Teams Within An Organization With Role Based Access Control

3. Exceptional Data Security Concerns

Finally, there might be very specific situations with exceptional data security concerns, both internal and external. These concerns could relate to alerts where remediation might expose personally identifiable information (PII) to internal support personnel who lack the necessary access. This could be a particular concern in highly regulated industries.It's important to note that, in most cases (4 out of 5), these data security concerns can be addressed by adjusting user roles and access permissions within a commercial platform. Therefore, modifying existing solutions should always be the primary approach. However, in those rare instances where it's truly unavoidable, a custom solution might be considered.

The Bottom Line In This Case

‍While there are a few niche scenarios where a custom Incident Management solution might be tempting, the advantages of commercial platforms are significant. They offer pre-built integrations, ongoing maintenance, and scalability, all while freeing up your internal resources to focus on core business objectives. Carefully evaluate your needs and weigh the long-term implications before starting a custom development project.

Do You Really Need To Build? A Time For Expertise

‍Making the decision between building a custom Incident Management solution or leveraging a commercial platform requires a strategic approach. Seasoned IT professionals understand that the initial creation of the solution is just the beginning. The true challenges lie in:

1. Long-term Support: Custom solutions require ongoing maintenance and updates, demanding dedicated resources. This can strain IT teams already stretched thin.
2. Risk Management: Building your own solution introduces inherent risks. Bugs, security vulnerabilities, and potential compatibility issues become your responsibility to manage. Commercial solutions, on the other hand, benefit from ongoing vendor development and support, minimizing these risks.

Beyond Development: The Operational Burden

‍The responsibility doesn't stop at creation. Running a custom Incident Management system adds another layer of complexity:

1. Meta-Incident Management: Do you have a plan to manage incidents within your Incident Management system? This creates a meta-management situation that can be cumbersome and resource-intensive.
2. Uptime Anxiety: Ensuring the uptime and reliability of your custom solution adds another layer of stress to your Incident Response workflow. If your incident management system goes down, you lose visibility into critical issues.

There are a few scenarios where building a custom solution might be considered:

1. Highly Specialized Integrations: If your needs involve complex, niche integrations directly into your codebase or infrastructure, a custom solution might be warranted.
2. Non-Critical Use Cases: For non-mission-critical workflows tangential to your primary Incident Management needs, a custom solution could be explored. 

Should You Buy an Incident Management Solution?

In most cases, vendor provided Incident Management solutions offer a compelling value proposition by:

1. Lower Total Cost of Ownership: While the initial cost of a commercial solution might seem higher, consider the long-term savings associated with reduced maintenance and support needs.
2. Scalability: Commercial solutions are designed to scale with your organization's growth, ensuring they continue to meet your needs as you expand. They can accommodate increasing incident volumes and integrate with new tools.
3. Knowledge Retention: Commercial solutions don't rely on individual expertise. Even if key team members leave, the knowledge and support remain readily available.
4. Reduced Risk: Commercial vendors typically invest heavily in security best practices and compliance certifications. This minimizes the risks associated with data privacy and security vulnerabilities that can arise with custom solutions.
5. Ongoing Maintenance & Support: Commercial vendors provide ongoing maintenance and support for their solutions. This includes bug fixes, security patches, and feature updates, ensuring your platform remains reliable and up-to-date.
6. Security & Privacy: Leading commercial solutions invest heavily in robust security practices and compliance, minimizing risks associated with data privacy.
7. Reduced Time to Value: Pre-built solutions come ready-to-use with pre-built features and integrations. This eliminates lengthy development cycles and allows you to realize the benefits of an Incident Management platform quickly.
8. Focus on Core Business: By leveraging a pre-built solution, you free up your internal IT resources to focus on core business objectives and strategic initiatives. This allows your team to focus on innovation and value-added activities.
9. Expertise & Best Practices: Commercial solutions are built based on industry best practices and incorporate the expertise of dedicated development teams. This ensures you benefit from a platform that reflects the latest trends and best practices in Incident Management.

Explore More: Guide To Best Incident Management Tools and Software of 2024

Don't miss out on opportunity cost

When evaluating "build vs. buy," carefully consider the opportunity cost. The time and resources dedicated to building and maintaining a custom solution could be better spent on core business initiatives. By focusing on this often-overlooked factor, the decision often becomes clear. 

If you already have a tool in place and are often stuck between jumping from alerting to incident response and back to alerting or ticketing tool, you can even go for migrating to a tool that does both. Here are two resources that can help you with choosing Squadcast:

• All-in-One Incident Management: Why Squadcast Trumps Separate On-Call and Alerting Tools
• Migrating From Your Tool to Squadcast

Unified Incident Response PlatformTry For Free Seamlessly integrate On-Call Management, Incident Response and SRE Workflows for efficient operations. Automate Incident Response, minimize downtime and enhance your tech teams' productivity with our Unified Platform. Manage incidents anytime, anywhere with our native iOS and Android mobile apps.

Conclusion

In most cases, the benefits and efficiencies offered by commercially available solutions outweigh the challenges and complexities associated with building your own platform. In most cases, the benefits and efficiencies offered by commercially available Incident Management solutions outweigh the challenges and complexities associated with building your own platform. 

With all that said, if you want to consult our IT advisors about Squadcast Incident Management solution, you can book a demo here today. 🙂

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Squadcast is an Incident Management tool that’s purpose-built for SRE. Get rid of unwanted alerts, receive relevant notifications and integrate with popular ChatOps tools. Work in collaboration using virtual incident war rooms and use automation to eliminate toil.