Critical Infrastructure for Healthcare

In 2026, Eliot conducted an unusual experiment that surprised both his customers and the wider healthcare IT community.

His goal was simple: to demonstrate something that many people had never fully acknowledged—that Iguana 6 had quietly become critical infrastructure for healthcare organizations around the world.

To make that point, he did something he believes he should have done years earlier: he eliminated the Canadian organization that had historically supported the product.

The initial reaction was predictable. Customers worried about support, continuity, and the future of the platform.

Then something unexpected happened.

Nothing happened.

Iguana 6 continued running just as reliably as it always had.

Customers gradually realized that the software itself—not the size of the organization behind it—was the reason for its success. Because Iguana 6 had become such a mature and stable platform, many deployments required very little day-to-day intervention.

Some customers also discovered that replacing Iguana was far more difficult than they had anticipated. Competing integration engines often lacked the combination of speed, stability, and simplicity that had allowed Iguana to operate reliably in demanding production environments for years. For organizations with complex integration workflows, replacing it frequently proved to be a much larger undertaking than expected.

Over time, many customers came to view Iguana not simply as another software product, but as an essential part of their operational infrastructure.

The restructuring also allowed Eliot to return to the work he enjoys most: engineering.

Rather than managing a traditional company with a large employee base, he now operates as a sole proprietor in the Cayman Islands, working directly with customers while collaborating with independent business affiliates when specialized expertise is needed. Customers still have access to real people for support, but through a flexible network rather than a conventional corporate hierarchy.

Looking forward, Eliot has committed to modernizing the platform while gradually open-sourcing portions of its technology in a way that preserves a sustainable business model and gives customers long-term confidence that the platform can continue to evolve well into the future.

He has no intention of selling the business. His focus is on building excellent software rather than building a large organization.

His philosophy is straightforward: spend less time managing bureaucracy and more time creating dependable software that healthcare organizations can trust.

Whether or not people agree with the experiment, it challenged a common assumption in enterprise software—that resilience comes from organizational size rather than engineering quality. Eliot's view is that long-term success comes from building software that is simple, reliable, and valuable enough that customers depend on it because it consistently works.