keeps the business connected.
Laptops, servers, identity, email, networks and cloud accounts. Good IT makes the estate safe and available.
Software continuity · London
20-minute checkThe software your people built is too important to lose.
Somebody clever used AI to turn your company's know-how into working software. Others now rely on it. The next job is productionising it: monitoring it, testing it, fixing it and releasing changes safely.
Stonehold protects the business IP your people encoded in software—and keeps it working, changing and secure.
Book a 20-minute Continuity Check
See an illustrative review No preparation. Bring your IT manager. If there is no meaningful continuity risk, we'll tell you.
YOUR PEOPLE ENCODED YOUR IP IN SOFTWARE
- Pricing logic
- Client methods
- Operating process
- Decision models
- Automations
- Integrations
AI helped them build it. Now the business depends on it.
You've been in this meeting.
“That thing's too important to live on Priya's laptop. Get IT to sort it.”
IT can host the code. But production software needs more than somewhere to run. It needs someone to protect the IP inside it, fix it, secure it and change it safely.
There's a job in your company that belongs to no one. It's ours now.
The category nobody staffed
02 / 10IT runs the estate.
We run the code.
Nobody owns the production software.
AI made building faster. It did not make the result production-ready. IT can host it, but hosting was never the whole job. The missing owner protects the business logic and keeps the software working, changing and secure.
Your subject-matter experts own the product. We own the technology behind it.
We work directly with them to turn product decisions into updates, then test and deploy every change safely. We also handle monitoring, bug fixes, dependency changes and security patches. The code, infrastructure and data stay in your own systems.
Two different jobs.
Now both of them have an owner.
A good problem to have
03 / 10This problem is
a compliment.
Mediocre teams don't have it. They've built nothing anyone would miss.
Your people did not merely build tools. They encoded pricing logic, client methods, judgement and operating process. AI made that possible at extraordinary speed. The only mistake was pretending success created no new responsibility.
It works. It matters. It just doesn't have anyone holding it. Yet.
The work does not stop when it launches
04 / 10Who updates it, fixes it and keeps it secure?
- 01
Who diagnoses and fixes it when it breaks?
- 02
Who updates dependencies and patches security issues?
- 03
Who changes it when the business, an API or regulation changes?
- 04
Who tests and deploys those changes safely?
- 05
Could somebody else explain the business rules encoded in it?
If the answer is still “whoever built it”, that is the continuity problem. That's what the twenty-minute call is for.
Where your IP quietly ends up
05 / 10AI made more of your people software builders.
The pricing tool
A commercial director used AI to turn years of quoting judgement into an app. Sales now uses it for every quote. One person knows why the numbers come out right.
The client portal
A consultant used AI to wrap the firm’s method in a client portal. Customers log in every day. Nobody has quite agreed who owns the method now it lives in code.
The model
Analysts encoded the company’s proprietary method in code and notebooks, accelerated by AI. It now produces the work clients pay for.
The Monday report
An operations lead used AI to join three systems and encode how the business fixes its data. If it misses Monday, decisions miss Monday too.
The Software Continuity Review
06 / 10Find it. Map it. Decide what happens next.
Understand
We meet leadership and IT, inspect the systems, and separate generic code from the company-specific judgement encoded inside it.
Recommend
You receive a decision-ready map of where the business's IP lives, what could fail and the smallest sensible response.
What £3,500 buys
A Software Continuity Map.
Something leadership can act on, IT can challenge and a new developer can use to understand both the code and the company knowledge inside it.
- 01A map of where business IP lives in code
- 02Named owners, knowledge holders and dependencies
- 03A red, amber or green continuity rating
- 04Security and operational risks
- 05A practical 90-day action plan
- 06A clear hire, hand over, retire or Stonehold recommendation
Software Continuity Review£3,500
You never pay twice. If Stonehold takes responsibility for the software within 30 days, the entire review fee becomes credit across the first three months.
Your builders keep building. IT keeps the estate. Priya takes a holiday.
FROM£4k/ MONTH
Updates, bug fixes, monitoring, security patches, documentation and safe releases. Cancel any month. A service you can leave has to stay good.
See what a review actually contains
07 / 10Enter your email.
We'll send you the full illustrative review.
A worked example of the evidence, decisions and actions a £3,500 Stonehold review is designed to produce.
Inside the review
- 01 Executive continuity rating
- 02 Ownership and dependency map
- 03 Six-control assessment
- 04 Business-facing risk register
- 05 30-60-90 day action plan
- 06 Hire, hand over, retire or Stonehold
The £100,000 question
08 / 10“Shouldn't we just
hire a developer?”
You probably need a team. But to do what, exactly?
Hiring a developer gives you a developer, not an operating model. The software still needs product direction from your subject-matter experts, technical ownership, monitoring, security, testing and a safe release process. One new hire may be part of the answer, but it does not define the job.
Sometimes the right answer is to hire. Sometimes it is to hand the software to IT, retire it or give Stonehold responsibility. The review recommends the answer that fits the work—not the answer that sells Stonehold.
Guessing first and reviewing later is also available. It costs a salary and six months.
A letter from the founder
09 / 10
“Great software was being built with AI. Nobody was set up to look after it.”
Through consulting with firms across the UK, I kept seeing people use their judgement and AI to build genuinely valuable software. It solved real problems, captured how the company worked and quickly became something the business depended on.
Then came the gap. The person who created it understood the work, but AI had enabled them to build useful software without needing to know how the underlying technology worked. The company had created valuable intellectual property, but nobody owned the technical job of testing, deploying, monitoring, fixing or securing it.
IT teams were not failing. They were being asked to take on custom application code and business logic that sat outside the job they had been set up to do. The firms did not need another transformation programme. They needed a simple way to keep their experts in charge of the product while giving the technology a proper owner.
That is why I started Stonehold. Your people keep creating. We take responsibility for keeping what they build working, secure and supportable.
Ralph ForgeonFounder, Stonehold
Designed for scrutiny
10 / 10A recommendation your IT manager can challenge.
IT is in the room.
We define the boundary together. Hosting, identity and the estate remain IT's domain; application continuity becomes explicit.
The answer can be “not us.”
Hire, hand over, retire or Stonehold. A useful review makes the right answer clear before anyone sells the next thing.
You can leave.
Ongoing support is month to month. Documentation and a clean handover are part of continuity, not an escape fee.
Questions sensible people ask
Before you invite us in.
Does the software have to use AI?
No. AI made this problem much more common by enabling more people to turn company know-how into working software. The continuity problem exists whenever important business knowledge has been encoded in code that too few people understand.
Does this only apply to software used by staff?
No. It may be used by colleagues, customers, partners or clients, or it may produce the work clients buy. The test is dependence: does the business need it to keep working?
What does ongoing support include?
Monitoring, incident diagnosis, bug fixes, dependency and security updates, testing and safe releases. We also adapt the software as your business, its data and the services it depends on change.
Is Stonehold replacing our IT team?
No. IT owns the technology estate. Stonehold focuses on the application code, operational knowledge and continuity that often sit outside the normal IT remit.
What if hiring is the better answer?
We say so, and describe the role or team the software actually requires. The review is valuable precisely because Stonehold is not the only possible recommendation.
What happens after the twenty-minute call?
We decide whether there is a meaningful continuity question. If there is, we scope the £3,500 review. If there is not, the process ends there.
Start with twenty minutes
Find out what your
company actually runs on.
No preparation. Bring your IT manager. If there is no meaningful continuity risk, we'll tell you.
- 01 Tell us what the software does.
- 02 Tell us who depends on it.
- 03 Suggest a time that works.