Appirio has launched a new partner program for connecting cloud apps through CloudSpokes, its 72,000-member developer community. Apps increasingly need to connect to offer a workflow that can appeal to an application’s user base.
The CloudSpokes partner program allows for companies to create their own spokes that act as networks for doing contests that developers participate in.
Smartsheet, a collaborative project-management tool with a spreadsheet-type app, ran a contest to create a connection with Salesforce.com. Updates from Salesforce.com are pulled into Smartsheet, which serves as the master document for managing a sales-lead pipeline.
The contest gave experts in Salesforce.com’s technology a chance to see how the Smartsheet API functions. It also gave a way to improve the Smartsheet service in a way that would have potentially meant more investment in developer talent.
Crowdsourcing can represent an obvious cost advantage. It splits the development into different tasks, helping mollify recruiting costs.
But there are lots of questions about crowdsourcing. Fierce Developer put this guide together to show what developers need to consider with a crowdsourcing platform: 
RedMonk’s Stephen O’Grady makes the point that harnessing the collective talent of a community can be a big advantage and that CloudSpokes has been creating a virtuous cycle that allows businesses in need to reward developers for their efforts.
I can live with that, but my expectation is that core development is not the way to develop an app. It takes a good team to do it right. But for connecting apps, it seems to make sense as long as the one hosting the contest is in tune with developers and the ways they work.
Appirio accelerates the cloud-powered business, helping enterprises achieve real results from cloud applications and platforms like salesforce.com, Google and Workday. Appirio has worked with more than 500 enterprise customers including organizations like City of Los Angeles, Facebook, Flextronics, Home Depot, International Hotels Group, Japan Post Network, Ltd., L’Oreal, NetApp, NYU, Starbucks, Thomson Reuters and VMware. Appirio’s technology-enabled professional services are supported by a team of nearly 500 cloud experts and CloudSpokes (www.cloudspokes.com), a more than 70,000 person-strong global cloud...
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