Here is an interesting one for cloud apps developers. Actuate Corporation, which specialises analytics and insights, is hosting an interactive panel discussion as part of their July 10, 2014 product launch event at Club Auto Sport in San Jose, California. The subject is `Building the Next Big App’ with a panel of the great and the good from the fields of open source, business intelligence, customer experience, and consumer brand marketing.
This raises the issue of whether a `next big app’ is actually needed, especially in business. Given the trend towards cloud services where single function, short-lived applications will increasingly take over from the traditional model of applications that survive long enough to become `big’ this does seem like an exercise in hot air.
If there is an app that will be `big’ it is likely to be what used to be called `middleware’- an environment that can work as the glue which allows service aggregators to rapidly and reliably build complex services that can be easily tailored to meet the specific business needs of individual businesses.
Be that as it may, if developers feel they have a contribution to make to the discussion, or they can learn something from the exercise, this is likely to be a good place to be on July 10th.
The panel discussion, with Q&A, will revolve around how shifting consumer behaviours, new digital channels, app standards and open source trends – particularly in Big Data – are influencing customer-facing application development.
The Panel will be moderated by Allen Bonde,Vice President of Product Marketing and Innovation at Actuate, co-founder of SaaS innovator Offerpop, and former Yankee Group and McKinsey analyst, and the panellists include Stephen O’Grady, Principal Analyst and Co-Founder of analyst firm, RedMonk, Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of the 10-year-old Eclipse Foundation, Loie Maxwell, Chief Marketing Officer at Social Imprints, and Esteban Kolsky, Principal and Founder of ThinkJar, an advisory and research think-tank.
