software architects was founded in the beginning of 2008 by Rainer Stropek and Karin Huber. By that time they combine more than two decades of experience in the software development and IT consulting. Karin and Rainer have written a lot of articles for online and print publications (e.g. MSDN magazine) as well as two books about WPF and XAML. Regularly both of them are invited as speakers to IT conferences all over the German-speaking part of Europe (e.g. MS BigDays, Basta, MS SOA days, etc.). Karin and Rainer have founded multiple IT consulting companies. The last one, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, had achieved a revenue of 2.7 million Euro with 22 employees in 2007 only three years after its founding.
Starting a business that focuses on development of COTS software components and products has been a dream for Karin and Rainer for years. In 2007 the dream started to become reality. They decided that new technologies like Windows Presentation Foundation, Silverlight, WS-*, Workflow Foundation, etc. would prepare the ground for a completely new generation of data-driven applications. However, they only found a minimal number of software products utilizing the new components. Therefore they decided to reduce their engagement in IT consulting and start their own COTS development business beside their existing consulting company.