About Labs

What Labs is

Labs is the research and experimental wing of Reptile Industries. It is where work happens that is not yet a product, questions get taken seriously before they become commercially relevant, and thinking is done at timescales that the practical work does not accommodate.

The work in Labs is distinct from the commercial offering by design. Systems and Solutions handle what is available now. Labs handles what comes next — and what might come considerably after that.

What Labs is not

• A product roadmap or near-term delivery commitment
• A replacement for Systems or Solutions
• The right place to go if you need managed infrastructure or bespoke software now
• A collection of speculative blog posts dressed up as research
• Public-facing in the same way the commercial branches are

For live services, see Systems and Solutions.

How Labs relates to the rest

Labs informs where the commercial branches go. Research that matures into something deployable moves into Systems or Solutions. Tooling developed in Labs that reaches production quality gets released through Open Source. Insights that are worth sharing publicly get published on this site.

The relationship is directional: Labs is upstream of the rest of the network. The practical work feeds backwards into Labs in the form of real operational problems worth studying.

Engagement with Labs

Labs is not a client-facing service. But substantive technical conversation is welcome. If the research directions here are relevant to your work, or if you want to discuss a specific area, reach out directly.

Access to some Labs materials is available to advanced-tier portal clients. Contact us for details.