Microsoft Buys GitHub: Why Your Code Is an Asset

In 2018, Microsoft announced the purchase of GitHub for 7.5 billion dollars. For many it was just another technical piece of news, the kind that only matters to programmers. But if you look at it calmly, it says something much bigger: one of the most valuable companies in the world paid a fortune not for buildings or machinery, but for a platform where code and its history live. In other words, it bet on an intangible asset.

And there lies the lesson for any business, even a Mexican small business that isn’t in the technology field. The software that makes your operation run—the system that invoices, the one that controls your inventory, the one that stores your customers—isn’t an expense thrown away every year. It’s capital. And like all capital, either you protect it and grow it, or you let it depreciate until one day it stops serving you.

Your software is capital, not an expense to forget

We tend to treat systems as a service that’s paid for and that’s it. But a good system accumulates value over time: it stores years of operation, reflects how your team works, and captures decisions you made along the way. That accumulated knowledge is hard to replicate and, often, impossible to recover if it’s lost.

Think of your accounting. No one in their right mind would leave the accounting books lying around with no backup, no order, and no idea who has access. Software deserves the same care, because it serves a similar function: it’s the living memory of your business.

If your accounting is an asset you guard jealously, your software and its history should be too.

What really matters isn’t just the code

When we talk about “protecting your software,” we don’t mean only the lines of programming. The value is spread across several layers, and it’s worth keeping them clear:

• The data. Your customers, your sales, your inventory, your suppliers. They’re irreplaceable and they’re yours.
• The processes. The particular way your company operates, already translated into a system that runs it every day.
• The history. The record of how your operation evolved, useful for auditing, understanding errors, and making better decisions.
• The access. Knowing who controls the accounts, the servers, and the code repository. If you don’t know, someone else does.

The signs you’re not protecting your asset

Many small businesses discover the problem too late, almost always after there’s already been a scare. It’s worth checking whether any of these signs sound familiar:

• You don’t know where your code lives or who holds the keys to your servers.
• You depend on a single person who “knows how everything works” and for whom you have no documentation.
• There are no reliable backups or any proof that they can actually be restored.
• Your system hasn’t grown with you: it’s the same as years ago while your business is already a different one.

None of these situations is a death sentence, but all are yellow flags. Addressing them in time is much cheaper than resolving them in the middle of a crisis.

How to start protecting your software

The good news is that protecting this asset doesn’t require a huge transformation or a multinational’s budget. It’s about taking orderly steps:

• Make an inventory. Note which systems you use, where they’re hosted, and who has access to each. You can’t protect what you haven’t mapped.
• Take control of your access. The accounts, domains, and repositories should be in your company’s name, not a provider’s or an employee’s.
• Ensure backups that actually work. A backup that’s never been tested isn’t a backup, it’s a hope.
• Document the essentials. So the knowledge doesn’t live only in one person’s head.
• Start with a concrete improvement. Choose a specific change, set a clear objective, and evaluate the result before continuing.

Microsoft paid billions because it understood that code is an asset. Your company doesn’t need that figure to make the same decision: it just needs to start treating its software as what it is. At Normandia Web we build custom software with exactly this in mind—so that your data, your processes, and your history stay yours and the system grows at your business’s pace. If you want to know where your software stands today, let’s talk and design the first step together.