Readify CEO Graeme Strange is tipping the market for Windows 8 business-to-business apps to exceed that for business to consumer apps, although he says the latter will dominate in the early days.
Strange told Microsoft’s partner, strategy and programmes manager Toby Bowers that the potential for Window 8 applications was being realised the highest level in organisations and that the early focus on B2C apps would quickly shift to B2B.
“I believe it is all about the apps, and the conversations are being held at C level,” Strange said. “The early wave will be about B2C and there will be a later wave that will be even bigger and that will be corporate applications.”
Strange said that Readify had seen “a massive opportunity” in Windows 8 from the beginning and had got on board very early. “We wanted to get into building our corporate app store early and deploying all our major applications through Windows 8.
“We saw the opportunity over 12 months ago and had most of our staff as very early adopters, starting to play with the alpha version of Windows 8. We ran a competition, with a little help from Microsoft, to see how many of our guys we could get writing applications and get them in the app store at launch date.”
Readify also gave all its state managers Surface devices. “We thought it was important that they were carrying those devices to our customers and showing off the technology and some of the internal apps we’d written,” Strange said.
“We already have three of those up and running. One we call ‘Where’s Wally’. It shows where everybody in our organisation is. We can see who is working at what customer on any particular day.”
Readify’s early adoption of Windows 8 has paid off. It was able to have one of its key customers put an app on the app store at the launch of Windows 8. “We did some proof of concept applications and we got a conversation going with one of our key customers, Webjet, three or four months before launch date and their CEO saw the opportunity immediately of getting to a new market,” Strange said. “Three months later they had an app in store for launch.”
Readify also built a mobile web site and hybrid web application for Webjet to improve the customer experience. It’s compatible with iPhone, Android and Windows Phone platforms and has brought Webjet many benefits. It has brought new traffic to the site, contributed to an increased growth in customers and profits and giving Webjet a competitive advantage.
For more information about Readify's Windows 8 Development services, call +61 3 9600 2339 or 1300 666 274 (within Australia) or visit the Web site at http://www.readify.net/
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