Cloud-Based Apps Will Disrupt the Software Business, Open Some Doors for Service Providers

In many ways, the emergence of mobile apps on smartphones and tablets is the front end of a broader shift of application architecture that someday will, with the growth of cloud computing, affect the way consumers and businesses buy and use software. For today's communications or video service providers, it is possible the changes will create the opportunity for a new role within the application business, something those providers are keenly anxious to find. 

It is possible, for example, that independent software providers (ISVs) will want to work with new partners as the sales model, revenue model and distribution channel change.  Perhaps "they will turn to players like the telcos, which provide billing engines for usage or transaction-based pricing," says Forrester Research (News - Alert) analyst John McCarthy. 

There could also be implications for telecom product sales forces. Assume, for example, that a mobile app provides the front end client download, while the cloud provides various capabilities required for the app to execute and provide value. Assume, for example, that a particular app is designed to use geolocation features, plus backend data bases and provisioning systems, to determine what services and features actually are available at a particular physical location. 

That could displace or augment any existing sales process, to a certain extent, making it easier for a customer to determine what can be bought, and from whom, either replacing some of the direct sales function or allowing such a process to focus on the more-difficult parts of a transaction, such as determining compatibility of the existing base of user equipment for use of any new service. It also is possible that a robust cloud-based service could automate some parts of those activities as well, then allowing sales personnel to focus time and attention on other elements of the application experience. 

Cloud-based capabilities likely also will change the design of applications as well, in part by using sensors in the new mobile devices to provide richer contextual features. In fact, it probably is hard to imagine now how apps might change in the future when the implications of location are better understood and incorporated into the fundamental application design. 

New cloud-based apps, delivered using an app store, should also tend toward simpler, purpose-built, task-oriented apps that are easy to use and might offer simpler functionality that obviates the need for training. That, in turn, suggests the possibility of change in the sales and distribution channel. Some app-store-optimized software products might cost much less, and require vastly less support.  

Task-oriented experience is perhaps one example. Perhaps apps will behave differently based on context. The same app that helps a use find a hotel in a city might default to a "directions" and then "check in" mode based in large part on use of geolocation capabilities. 

The point is that the emergence of the mobile app store model will at some point start to be augmented by more-robust cloud-based capabilities in ways that create not only a different approach to creating software but also a different way of selling, provisioning and pricing and supporting software. Some of those changes will help or harm various players. Along the way, roles within the ecosystem also could change, and changes that embed service providers in new ways cannot be discounted.