How the app store could revolutionise the enterprise

Richard III saw this as the season of his discontent, but in 2010, winter is proving to be a happy time for computer users. It sees the launch of app stores both for Mac OS X and for Google's Chrome OS. Both have already been announced, and Google's is already available.

The Chrome App Store brings together Internet-based applications in a way that makes it easier for people to consume them. It lists them all on a single, searchable site, and presents them in an attractive layout, similar to that found in Apple's app store for the iPad and the iPhone.

Now, Apple is doing the same. It will feature an app store in its OS X operating system bringing together applications that it approves of in a single place. This won't stop third parties from selling applications not listed in the app store, but it will make it easier for users to find and download the software that they like.

What's here for the enterprise? The concept of providing users with online catalogues of applications and online services could revolutionise the way that they interact with the IT department. Ask yourself how your users procure applications for use in their work, and how you provision them? How easy is it for users to find and access the functions that they want? How fluid is the exchange of information about those applications and how well they perform?

The combination of app stores with cloud computing environments could bring new vitality to IT in the workplace. Cloud-based companies such as Salesforce are already providing application platforms that independent software vendors can use to develop custom services using their infrastructures. These are then made available through AppExchange, its cloud-based app store, and applications can be rated by users.

It is easy to see how techniques such as these might make it possible to promote cloud computing and service-oriented architectures to line of business managers and users. If cloud-based applications and services developed by internal departments and third party partners could be displayed in this way, it would bring home the benefits of an online application infrastructure to users. It might also soften the blow when organisations pursue desktop virtualisation and find themselves trying to convince an unwilling user base.

Rudimentary versions of this concept have been pursued before. In the early 2000s, Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI) gave companies a software stack that enabled them to publish centrally accessible services, based on the then-new concepts of SOAP. Today, SOAP, other forms of XML-based API, and architectures such as REST are enabling far more applications and services to integrate with each other online. The time for cloud-based app stores in the enterprise may just becoming of age.

This concept could promote the use of IT in general as a more responsible, user-oriented business function. It could, in short, make IT sexy again in the enterprise. And as CIOs strive to redefine their departments as corporate assets and strategic partners, that could be a powerful tool in the battle to win the hearts and minds of business users.