Case study
Application security — from toolkit to platform
A security-focused company had a collection of open-source tools and ideas around application security, but no coherent story or deployable platform. We shaped those pieces into a product-ready platform concept with a clear deployment model.
Sector
Application security / DevSecOps
Focus
Platform design, deployment model, product narrative
Outcome
New customers and a $50k innovation grant tied to the platform concept.
Problem
Lots of tools, no platform story
The company had strong security expertise and a pile of open-source tools they believed in. Internally, people could see the potential; externally, it looked like a loose toolkit rather than a product.
Potential customers struggled to answer basic questions: What exactly are we buying? How does it fit into our CI/CD? What does it look like in production?
Approach
Designing an opinionated, deployable platform
Use the strengths of open source, but package them as a product with a clear integration path.
Platform architecture
- • Identified core capabilities the platform needed to deliver.
- • Mapped existing tools to those capabilities and filled critical gaps.
- • Defined an architecture that could be deployed in customer environments.
Deployment & integration model
- • Designed a deployment approach aligning with modern CI/CD pipelines.
- • Clarified how the platform plugged into existing DevOps workflows.
- • Documented upgrade, rollout, and rollback patterns.
Product story and documentation
We wrapped the technical work in diagrams and a narrative that explained the platform in plain language: what it does, how it’s deployed, and how it reduces risk for customers. This became the backbone of sales conversations and funding applications.
Outcome
A platform that customers and funders could actually see
With a clear platform architecture and deployment model, the company could talk about their work in concrete terms, not just as “a set of tools”.
That clarity played a role in attracting new customers and securing a $50k innovation grant tied to the platform concept.