Cloud Expo on Ulitzer

How is Apple’s success influencing the future of computing? Force.com and Google Apps now have marketplaces similar to the Apple App store whose target is businesses not consumers.

You will get very few of these free or something that costs just a couple of bucks. These apps usually these have monthly maintenance fees associated with these and a lot of them have a “freemium” model, free for limited functions with a cost for value-added functionality. This is probably going to change the way business applications are delivered.

Going from an in-premise model to a hosted, cloud model gives business an unprecedented opportunity for start-ups to build and market applications with a very small investment. This will truly make the world “flat” for enterprise applications. For example, it will it give companies based in emerging markets access to western markets outside of BPO and application development. My opinion is that there will not be a sudden change but this will seriously change the balance in the enterprise software market in the longer run. Integrating cloud applications will be key to this success.