Building Oliasoft: The Technology Choices that Shaped Our SaaS Journey in the Energy Industry

In 2015, a drilling engineer, a software developer, and a business developer came together with a vision to revolutionize software tools in the drilling and well domain, which had been underserved for decades. From that meeting, Oliasoft was born, and as the software developer of the group, I was tasked with making critical decisions on the technology we would use.

Our goal was ambitious but straightforward: modernize outdated industry software, which until then had largely consisted of Windows programs running on SQL databases like Microsoft or Oracle. As we were starting with a clean slate, we had the luxury — and challenge — of making numerous decisions about our tech stack. Here's a look at how those decisions were made and why.

The Case for a Web-Based Approach

The first and most fundamental choice was whether to follow the traditional path of developing a thick client—essentially a native Windows application—or embrace the growing trend of delivering software through the web. By 2015, web applications were being successfully deployed across a range of industries, and the benefits of going web-based were clear.

There were, of course, valid reasons why one might still opt for a native application back then, particularly in terms of performance and hardware access. However, with the rapid advancements in web technologies and the growing cloud infrastructure, the reasons to go native were dwindling. Being "cloud-native" was increasingly appealing, not just for scalability and deployment, but also for the ease of access from anywhere.

We made the decision to build Oliasoft WellDesign as a web-based single-page application (SPA). This allowed us to create an experience similar to a native app, where most of the user interface and logic runs on the client-side, but within the browser. SPAs also benefit from browser-based security and allow for easy updates without requiring the user to download new versions. However, they do face limitations such as restricted access to local files and system resources.

Choosing the Right Programming Languages and Frameworks

Once we decided to build a web-based SPA, the next step was selecting the right technology stack. In 2015, if you were writing code for the browser, JavaScript was essentially the only option. While this is still largely the case today, tools like TypeScript have since emerged to improve the developer experience. We chose JavaScript for the client-side, recognizing that while it was not perfect, it was the most practical choice for building a responsive and interactive GUI.

But the application wasn't just about what happened in the browser. We also needed to build out the web infrastructure—the back-end services that would handle everything from data storage to complex computations. In 2015, there was no shortage of options for web servers and frameworks, with every major programming language offering its own ecosystem.

The Server-Side Decision: Why Linux?

My personal background in programming stretches back to the early 1980s, a time when the personal computing world was expanding rapidly. I’ve worked with IBM PCs, early Microsoft systems, and Unix variants, but it was the arrival of Linux that really transformed how I approached technology.

Linux and the broader open-source movement gave developers like me access to powerful, flexible tools that eclipsed the proprietary systems of the time. By the time Oliasoft was founded, Linux had firmly established itself as the backbone of modern cloud infrastructure. FreeBSD was another contender, but for us, Linux was the clear choice. It had already "won" the server-side battle, becoming the dominant operating system for cloud-hosted applications.

While Microsoft was heavily promoting its .NET framework as an all-encompassing solution for both front-end and back-end development, I never felt it aligned with the flexibility and control we needed. Given my experience with Linux and open-source technologies, the decision was straightforward: Oliasoft's server infrastructure would be built on Linux.

Looking Ahead

The decision to build Oliasoft as a cloud-native, web-based SaaS solution was driven by a combination of practicality, performance, and the growing dominance of open-source technologies. These early choices set the foundation for everything that followed. In future posts, I'll dive deeper into the specific technologies and tools we selected for our server stack and how they’ve helped us scale and innovate in an industry that’s often resistant to change.