Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) are leading the way into highly specialized software services and helpful niche products, taking several industries into a new age of efficiency, whether by cloud or on-premise solutions. Using business partnerships to support innovation is a common model for developers trying to get their products off the ground, but it is a misunderstood process by industry outsiders. A great way to understand how an Independent Service Vendor can benefit from a partnership is through recent news reported by CNBC of Apple’s iCloud services using Google’s public cloud, as a third-party storage service.
This made news earlier this year with previously confirmed storage systems provided by Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. The new iCloud service now confirms that Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Platform host and store data used by Apple customers as they throw the latest photo album or business document “into the cloud.” This move is confirmation that Google’s cloud intends to be a competitor among Amazon and Microsoft in the cloud infrastructure arena.
With cloud services gaining in popularity, many digital natives cease to even imagine that it takes physical servers to host and store their information, “the cloud” can be viewed as an ethereal, never-ending landmark where your personal data floats among the angels until you’re ready to retrieve it.
What does this have to do with ISVs?
An Independent Service Vendor (ISV) has a concentrated specialty in developing, building, and selling software products for consumers or enterprise. The ISV software is designed for niche markets or broader mass market users run on one or more computer hardware and/or operating system while remaining the property of the vendor. ISVs will often engage in “business partner” programs to support their software on a platform so that the ISV can focus on what they do best, while gaining capabilities from a business partner through hosting, storage, or product development, to strengthen their business approach and gain support through IT specialization.
Using Apple’s new reveal as a broad example of how this exchange works
Apple has joined with Google to host their iCloud, a service integrated with its many products. When consumers use Apple’s iCloud, their contacts, calendars, photos, and other content could be very well living on Google Cloud Platform. This demonstrates how a company can use a third-party’s services in partnership to host, store, and market their offering. Apple still controls the data encryption, breaking the files down for that process by iCloud. Apple states that the data doesn’t disclose “any user-identifying information,” meaning that as a customer of Apple, your data might live on Google’s servers, but it is impenetrable by the company storing billions of faithful customers’ data. Keys and file metadata are stored by Apple in user’s accounts, but the encrypted file chunks are handled by Google, in the third-party cloud, though without any user-identifying information available to the storage vendor.
This, of course, is not a new process for companies, but a regular practice in the industry. The use of third-party cloud infrastructure is becoming more accepted and commonplace for companies that can’t, or choose not to open data centers to host their own content. The truth is, many Apple customers have no idea where their data is being stored, nor do they care. These types of partnerships often fade into the background—in this case, an updated iOS Security Guide released by Apple and typically read and studied by few consumers. These tech giants have gained coverage over the news, but this happens every day in the world of software creation and app development.
Why are partnerships so valuable for ISVs?
Successful, active IT and infrastructure companies can offer a lot to emerging developers and customers. Obviously, customer needs will drive your business, and today’s customer has more diverse needs than ever before. One solution alone will not serve the desires of your client base and this is where a partnership can help cater to the maturing consumer.
A partnership can help ISVs take advantage of additional technical and market resources to provide dynamic solutions and increased visibility by utilizing an established ecosystem. Having a team of people to support software and offer added security during integration is extremely valuable to ISVs as they begin to market their products. This can be especially critical for smaller ISVs and development companies who simply don’t have the servers to host the software.
Consider SaaS as an ISV
Progress from the legacy on-premise code and architecture into the Software as a Service (SaaS) offering is still an ongoing process and, indeed, not every ISV is ready for the challenges of SaaS. However, there are considerable benefits to taking on the modern progression and more and more partnership programs utilize SaaS solutions as a foundation.
Having the advisement and specialized support of a partner so the ISV can concentrate on development and customer success can make a defining difference in the success of emerging software products. A trusted provider with the ability to assist in bringing your product to market can make a huge difference in cutting out added time and money. Many IT companies offer a variety of services, depending on where an ISV might be in the production of their project usually as a mix of managed services, hosting, development, and ongoing support.
Crossroads offers dedicated partnership for Independent Service Vendors at any phase of project development. To speak to an experienced team of IT and hosting specialists, contact us at 1 (866) 216-4366 or email at engageThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
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