What Are ISV Published Apps and How Can You Benefit from Them? From laptops to smartphones, our personal computing devices provide us with a vast number of convenient benefits in the workplace, at home, and on the road. It goes without saying, though, that these handy gizmos have only limited “out of the box” functionality—they must be customized to accommodate the needs of the individual user. One way to do this is to install various applications (or “apps”) and software that can perform certain desired functions. Apps come in a dizzying array of choices; it’s possible to download one for seemingly every purpose, whether you’re looking to make accounting calculations on your cell phone or just play a simple game. This shouldn’t be news to anyone with any experience with personal computing products, but what many people don’t fully realize is that many apps are issued not by huge multinational corporations but by relatively modest outfits known as independent software vendors, or ISVs. The Need for ISVs The business world has become increasingly reliant on apps in order to carry out mission-critical tasks, such as scheduling appointments, editing documents, scanning barcodes, and much, much more. There is a broad range of common business activities that apps can potentially help to manage, and the wide array of diverse organizations out there means that, in addition, there is a vast number of industry-specific “niche” functions that software programs conceivably may be tailored to perform. For that reason, it would be practically impossible for any single software company, no matter how large or well-funded, to produce every type of business app that might find a significant audience. Independent software vendors are organizations that came along to satisfy the demand for specialized apps that could perform certain tasks beyond the capabilities of existing software on the market. As one might expect from companies that develop niche products, ISVs can be very tiny operations. In fact, the term “micro ISV” has been created as a label for those vendors that have only a handful of employees; often these companies produce highly specialized apps for specific kinds of small businesses. But it would be a mistake to think of ISVs as “bootleg” operations that develop low-quality products. Actually, many ISVs receive support and funding from major hardware and software companies such as Apple and Microsoft, as quality niche apps are generally understood to enhance the value of the products manufactured by these big-name organizations. How CyberlinkASP Can Help Companies Find ISV Apps For a small, struggling independent software vendor, figuring out how to distribute apps to clients can be a tricky procedure. Fortunately, CyberlinkASP’s hosting program for ISV published apps provides a simple way for independent software vendors to forge relationships with business clients that have use for these products. Leveraging the convenient distribution
capabilities of cloud technology, CyberlinkASP can hook up customers with their chosen app in literally only a few minutes. There's no need for ISVs to worry about the hassles of maintaining servers, or for businesses to engage in a wild Easter egg hunt to obtain the applications they need—CyberlinkASP takes over the responsibilities of helping customers download and update their apps.