In (domain or enterprise software) architecture, there are to generic patterns you’ll likely come across often, yet many developers does not seem to be familiar with them and knowing a bit about them may help understand why some choices are made when building a complete software stack across a company or enterprise.

These are:

• Best of suite
• Best of Breed.

When adopting the “best of suite” strategy, the Enterprise Architecture will seek to find big software suites, which can over a large domains. One of the most often picked suites is often Microsoft OFfice, where Word, Excel, Powerpoint and the other applications included in Microsoft office comes a single package - a suite.

When daopting the “best of breed” pattern, the enterprise architecture will seek to find the best application for every need - and not consider any preference for seleting a coherent suite. In the above example, instead of picket Microsoft office as a single suite, the best application in every category. It could be Word for as a wordprocesor, but Keynote for presentations and Google Sheets for managing numbers.

The suite versus breed does apply to any software need in the enterprise and could apply to any area - ERP, HR-systems or any other area the company needs fulfilled by software.

When choosing best of suite…

• You assume the integration between the applications are easy and seamless.
• You believe the individual applications are “good enough” or at least sufficient to fulfil your needs.
• You expect the operations will be simpler, as a single vendor provides the solution (and may be support it).
• Potential vendor lock-in - and/or - dependency on vendor strategy and roadmap to keep being the best suite for you needs.

When choosing best of breed…

• You pick the very best applications and will invest in integrations as needed.
• You assume picking the best will provide more value than a coherent suite.
• You may need to handle multiple vendors and license terms.
• It’s likely easier to replace one or more applications if needed.