Apps and Gaps

I was just reading Apps, Gaps and Equilibrium:

Businesses and IT are facing a world of Apps, where the supply of technology vastly exceeds business demand or IT’s capacity to implement, integrate and operate.  The world of apps is a world of technology, as opposed to a world of gaps dominated by internal IT.  This situation is relatively new, starting in about 2009 with the large-scale availability of cloud, mobile and otherlightweight technologies.

Look at one of the new roles of IT – managing an internal appstore which is basically a directory (or even a repository) of apps. These may be cloud apps, webapps, mobile apps or tablet apps. This is s trend and a bit of shift.

It bring up lots of questions in my mind:

  • Will IT evaluate/screen and filter over 500,00 Apps (they can skip some categories like games) to select a few that their organization can benefit?
  • How will the App stores inside the company look like? (hopefully much better search, better taxonomy of classification and even a request/ recommendation/rating system).
  • Will corporate appstores look like a cross between the vendor appstore/Quora and StackOverflow? How will they keep them current as new apps emerge in the marketplace?
  • Will groups spring up inside the organization to try out new apps and recommend to IT?
  • Will the App mashups become popular?
  • Will IT demand that all app vendors support APIs to control, integrate apps?
  • Will IT work on loosely connecting these apps? Will Apps lend themselves to be easily interconnected?
  • Who will they identify innovative apps that the business can leverage?  Does this require an App spotting department or become one of the new roles of the innovation unit?

How will app vendors leverage this trend?

  • Will they architect their apps to be easily interconnected, integrated?
  • How will Apps reliance on certain platforms, cloud services impact the adoption by enterprise?
  • Will App vendors rethink pricing strategies and site licensing agreements for enterprises?
  • Will there be  new classes of App Integrators that bridge the gap betweem app makers and corporations?

It will be interesting to watch how both IT and app makers leverage this trend and work on mining a wealth of opportunities.