Affino 9 Tech Paradigm Shift

This year has seen the biggest technical shift in Affino for over a decade, and after thirty five updates to Affino 8 we will be launching Affino 9 this autumn / fall.

Affino 9 might look the same but it will be running on a transformed infrastructure which will significantly accelerate future evolution.

We have seen four major tech paradigm shifts over the course of Affino’s evolution:

1. Cloud Computing and SaaS
2. The Open Source Age
3. The Mobile Revolution
4. AI and Layers

It is impossible to imagine developing any software or digital services without the first three, and indeed the fourth revolution of AI and Layers is now rapidly accelerating and indeed transforming how we develop software and deliver services at every level.

Affino 9 Embraces a Lot of New Tech

The transition to Affino 9 has been highly complex as a major part of the transition has been from legacy proprietary technologies to newer open source ones. The timing is right because the open source alternatives have become far more compelling and broadly adopted, and have matured to a level where it is possible to migrate a platform as significant, and complex, as Affino.

Unfortunately there is no exact overlap between the two technologies, and although the coding methodology is similar,  we are having to create a compatibility layer throughout Affino to support the migration from Affino 8 to 9. This has resulted in the need to develop a host of new replacement services in Affino to fill in the gaps, often using innovative combinations of multiple new frameworks, which we have had to adapt to our requirements.

The Shift to Serverless Layers

Affino has invested heavily in migrating aspects of our platform to a mix of latest generation serverless services, in particular on Amazon AWS Layers, Langchain, Pinecone, ChatGPT, Lucee, PostgreSQL, node.js, charts.js, and increasingly towards Open Source platforms and toolkits wherever possible.

The advent of enterprise grade AI APIs from ChatGPT, Microsoft, Google and others at the beginning of 2023 has completely transformed what is possible with software. It is clear that to stay relevant we have to quickly adopt AI across our product portfolio.

AI - Vector Databases - and LLMs

To that end we have researched and invested heavily in the available LLMs (Large Language Models), both open source and proprietary. We have researched a number of Vector Databases, which are a cornerstone of custom AIs. We have also extensively prototyped our own AI user interfaces and data platforms, exploring the key foundation AI frameworks including Langchain.

We have worked through hundreds of research and development projects throughout this technology adoption and migration shift.

This required the team to develop a much deeper level understanding of the fundamentals of the new serverless layered AI and associated technologies, and for us to in turn develop far more of our own tech to ensure we will leverage the full power of AI in Affino.

Affino 9 is Imminent

The last radical shift in Affino was the move to Affino 8 and the responsive front end interfaces. This meant a ground up reworking of all the audience facing display-side components of Affino to deliver the outstanding user experiences enjoyed today.

It did take some time though for us to migrate fully to responsive on the display side as Affino is such a broad and far reaching platform.

The move to Affino 9 is the start of the next great service shift. The first being the steady rollout of the new Control Centre. This has already been previewed in a number of dashboards and reporting screens, not least the Analysis Dashboard.

Over the coming releases you will see a steady transformation of Affino’s Control Centre management suite. We have mapped this out, developed all the prototypes, and can’t wait to have the new Control Centre with you.

The second major shift is for us to steadily enhance all aspects of Affino’s service delivery through the AI lens, providing enhanced management and user experiences throughout. The first major enhancement will be the ability for you to turn any Article, PDF and Forum content into AI’s in the form of conversations chat bots.

We can’t wait to share the journey with you and look forward to upgrading all Affino sites to the 9th generation over the coming weeks.