Why “Keystone”? Arches, Pipelines and Software Stacks

A keystone is the wedge-shaped stone at the top of an arch. Remove it and the arch falls. That idea explains a pipeline, a platform and a business name.

Roman builders understood that an arch carries weight by pushing it sideways into its neighbors. Every stone matters, but the keystone, set last at the crown, locks the others in place. Ecologists borrowed the word for keystone species, like sea otters or beavers, whose presence holds a whole ecosystem together. Pennsylvania calls itself the Keystone State because it sat at the center of the original thirteen colonies.

Three keystones

• The Keystone Pipeline is critical energy infrastructure: one line moving a large share of Canadian crude into U.S. refineries. When it shuts down, markets notice.
• Keystone by Kingswell is Kingswell Strategic Ventures’ set of connected software tools (“SaaS stacks”) for businesses, built so that one account holds the rest of a company’s systems together.
• Local keystones, like the businesses that anchor a Grand Strand main street, hold a community’s economy in place.

The lesson

In every case the keystone is the piece that bears the load. Good keystones are designed for failure: inspected, maintained and backed up. That is as true for a pipeline as it is for a company’s software, and it is the standard Kingswell sets for Keystone.

A Boston Made Reader original. Keystone by Kingswell is a Kingswell Strategic Ventures product and is not affiliated with South Bow, the Keystone Pipeline, or any other business that uses the Keystone name.