About Genus

Genus started in 1995 with a simple question: why must software be either off-the-shelf or custom-built? We believed that was a false choice. In 1998, the company was formally founded as Genus AS, and ever since, we have helped large enterprises and public sector organisations build and evolve business-critical applications.

With off-the-shelf software, the challenges are straightforward. You pay for some functionality you don't use, while you don’t get some you do need. Finding off-the-shelf software that meets all your needs is nearly impossible. This is especially true for enterprises with many complex needs.

On the other hand, customised software gets you what you want initially, but it is usually planned and built around current business needs and future assumptions. Customised software often takes years to develop – and by the time it is implemented, needs have changed. The result is often an expensive and outdated system that is hard to change.  

We asked ourselves: Is there another way? Can you build tailored software that actually lasts – and do it quickly?

Our solution was a platform that allows you to develop enterprise-level software without programming. Enterprises consist of humans, not machines, so software must be built for people. In our experience, coding is like concrete. As time goes by it becomes harder and more complex to mold. That is why we separated technology and business. While talented programmers coded the platform, tech-savvy people would use it to build applications for customers. With our visual tool, anyone could build interfaces and complex business logic for enterprises – without writing a single line of code.

Our hunch was that this approach would speed up both the development and adaptation of tailored software applications. Every application runs on one underlying platform; hence, all customers can use any premade building block in their solution.

We also believed that a visual model would help bridge the gap between business and IT. A system developer no longer wrote code, and instead spent time defining business concepts and processes much closer to the language of the end user. Collaboration was made easier.

Additionally, we wanted applications to be flexible, extendable, and high-performing. We wanted to support systems with countless numbers of users and large amounts of data. And – we wanted the entire development process to be intuitive and visual! The Genus platform was, is, and continues to be the result of our vision. We work closely with partners and customers across many industries with different challenges. They all run their applications on our platform, our only product. Genus is a mature, feature-rich application development platform enabling simple solutions for complex challenges.