Eighteen months ago Richard Sykes forecast that the real outsourcing commerce of ‘the Cloud’ would develop in the form of Platforms. He now confirmes that judgement.

A platform? Consider the iApps platform: a technical construct in ‘the Cloud’ that enables innovative ventures to create and deliver new applications for the iPhone. The platform provides an integrated set of infrastructural (data processing, storage and network) and support services to the technical standards that ensure full compatibility with the iPhone – and these services scale rapidly if sales of the new iApp prove to be a runaway success!

PayPal is now positioning itself as a mobile banking platform ‘in the Cloud’, offering an increasing diversity of services for the management of personal accounts and payments through the increasingly intelligent mobile phone. Security is ‘in the platform in the Cloud’. There is a developers’ area of the platform (the first, PayPal claims, to be offered by a Financial Services company) with access to secure APIs. The old-fashioned signed cheque can be deposited by taking a photo of each side of the cheque and despatching the paired images.

Facebook is also now positioning itself as a platform, developing an increasing diversity of services for its over-500m active users on its core technology platform (that also claims to be the largest gaming platform in the world). It is eyeing its future as a potential replacement for the intranet in the large enterprise – it has recently launched a ‘Groups’ capability and argues that it is more in tune with the working culture of the Millennial generation that is now moving into, onto and up the corporate ladder. In this vision, the Facebook platform could be exploited to allow a more seamless interaction between the contemporary Enterprise and its customers.

In the meantime, salesforce’s well established force.com is gaining ground as a leading platform for the development of, and delivery of, business applications, particularly in the web services arena. It provides access to pre-built software components: 80% simple assembly plus 20% new code = more rapid creation of new applications.

So here is a new dimension to the Enterprise (out)sourcing strategy. The Enterprise will already have the essential elements of an internal platform on its infrastructure. Yet key to most businesses is effective & real time access to customers, suppliers and the supply chains that support external realities of the business model. The developing commerce of these ‘platforms in the Cloud’ may offer a new and innovative means for the sourcing of an exostructure able to support delivery of the outward facing aspects of the Enterprise business model.

Source: http://www.outsourcemagazine.co.uk/articles/item/3607-platforms-make-sense-in-the-cloud