by Lisa Banks

Australian developers take advantage of Google’s Cloud

News
Jun 24, 20112 mins
Cloud Computing

The Cloud has offered businesses of all types a chance to streamline IT and find new efficiencies, and now it has created a new channel for Australian developers to distribute their products. One Australian developer who has found this to be the case is Perth-based Anthony Smith, who has used Google’s Apps Marketplace to distribute his hosted CRM solution, Insightly.

Smith, who had used Google Apps for his workplace email and calendar at his previous job, began developing the product after he was unable to find a small scale CRM product that could integrate with Google Apps.

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Working on his own, Smith developed Insightly specifically for the Google Apps Marketplace.

“We used Google Apps internally and we definitely wouldn’t have tried to integrate with anything else…it goes hand in hand with customer management and we also do task management.”

Smith says the bulk of Insightly’s purchases have come from US rather than Australia. Smith believes Australian enterprises are cautious about moving essential applications to the Cloud.

“I think there’s some hesitancy,” Smith says. “We see a lot of positive outcomes from customers in the US, because they tend to be far more eager to move to the cloud than other customers in Australia.”

A recent Frost Sullivan report noted that Australian enterprises are leading the Asia Pacific in Cloud adoption, though most are choosing to go with hybrid models.

According to Google, it’s the Apps Marketplace has more than 4 million users with access to applications, but that these statistics are not broken down by region.

A Google spokesperson said that a number of Australian developers are moving into this space, with business management software package, AffinityLive:Suite, and online diagram and designing application, Creatley, two of the examples of Australian developers using the Apps Marketplace to launch their products.

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