Ailita: identity out of the monolith, turned into a product
How one part of our school management system became Ailita, the secure front door all our products share today.
Every product story starts with a problem. Ailita’s started with a very common one: we were about to build the same thing for the second time.
A growing system
Allumai, our school management system, had everything in one place: courses, students, grades… and also users, passwords and permissions. It worked well. Until we started building our second product.
Then the question was unavoidable: were we going to build sign-in, password recovery, two-factor and permissions all over again? And maintain the most sensitive part of any system twice?
The decision
We decided to separate that piece and turn it into something of its own: an identity service any product could use. But separating something that works, without stopping what was already in use, is delicate work. We did it step by step, with the original system running the whole time. We describe the method in Modernize without rewriting.
Since we were doing it anyway, we thought big:
- Many companies, each in its own space. With its brand, its users and its access rules.
- One front door for every product. Products never see a password.
- Real security. Two-factor, Google and Microsoft sign-in, sessions that close instantly.
- A watchful eye on every sign-in, noticing when something doesn’t look usual.
- Tools to manage companies, users and roles without depending on anyone.
The result
That’s how Ailita was born. When we built Alfred, our invoice product, we didn’t have to write a single line of sign-in code: Alfred has used Ailita from day one. And any product that comes next will do the same.
What started as housekeeping ended up as a product in its own right. It happens to us often: the best products come from solving your own problem well.
If your company has a system that grew too much and nobody dares to touch, let’s talk.