Guest post by: Madelyn Olack
Application Partner Manager at SaaS Markets
It seems like there are cloud-based apps for everything these days, and with the amount of new apps being introduced to the market each month, it can be hard to keep up with them all. So why isn’t there an app that will help me keep my house plants alive? I mention this slightly in jest, while reflecting upon Apple’s now-ubiquitous phrase, “there’s an app for that.” Yet, it speaks to a notable cloud computing trend–the increased specialization of cloud-based applications, or “SaaS apps.”
My dream is an app that takes simple snapshots of my house plants’ leaves, and keeps track of their health (not to mention what plant category/family these plants are a part of). My hope is that I could actually keep some of my house plants alive for more than a couple of months. This dream app would tell me if I need to water the plants more, water them less, change their dirt, temperature, amount of sunlight, etc. Such an app would not only be perfect for me, but from a business perspective, it would help thousands of small and medium-sized floral business–the backbone of the floral industry. Sound crazy? Not really.
Here’s why: as the Application Partner Manager for SaaS Markets, my team is constantly reviewing new apps and adding them to our global network of app stores–the SaaS Commerce NetworkTM. Some of the SaaS apps that we have discovered are simply amazing, and their business applications (pun intended) cut across virtually every industry vertical.
From niche apps like Tambero and FarmerOn, which help farmers manage their dairy cows, to more commonplace apps, such as Zoho Calendar and SugarSync, that help those of us that work in front of a computer for a living–the spectrum of cloud-based apps is constantly increasing. SaaS Markets adds new SaaS applications to our stores every month, in an effort to make our working lives more manageable, while eliminating the cost of over-priced, installed software at the same time.
Here’s the great news: the software industry is heeding the call of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), and the growing app marketplace has given niche app developers a unique opportunity. Because the cost to deliver software per user is lower within the Cloud, app segments with smaller target markets (i.e florists) can now be profitably grown. Yes, i think it’s only a matter of time before I find the perfect plant app of my dreams–not just for me, but for the florists of the world, of course.
