JackBe rolls out 'enterprise app store'

JackBe is applying the app store concept to its own products for building enterprise mashups, applications that pull together data from various systems.

The capability is part of JackBe Presto 3.0, which was announced Wednesday. Users can look up, share and rate mashups.

The platform is organized around Presto Hub, which provides a single point of sign-on for JackBe's mashup development editors, governance tools for administrators, and application storefront.

JackBe began developing the store framework partly due to the obvious popularity the delivery model has in the consumer world, as well as in response to concern from customers, who were developing so many apps that organizing and cataloguing them had become a little difficult, said Chris Warner, vice president of marketing.

In turn, the app store concept could spur JackBe customers to develop even more mashups, said CTO John Crupi.

But the model has a long way to go before it's fully formed for enterprise purposes, said Redmonk analyst Stephen O'Grady.

"The challenge with marketplaces is that the most successful examples are all platform-specific," he said. "The App Store is Apple-specific, the Google Apps Marketplace is specific to that platform, and so on. There are certainly vendors that will attempt a multiplatform marketplace approach, but that's a lot of moving pieces to manage."

In addition, marketplaces are generally focused on software, he added.

While a few include professional services as well, "that aspect is under-utilized and under-represented industry wide. When these marketplaces begin to attract the same attention as the larger job boards, the possibility of retailing services-dependent applications goes up," O'Grady said.

Pricing information for Presto 3.0, which is licensed per core, wasn't available.

Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris's e-mail address is Chris_Kanaracus@idg.com

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