Disposable Business Apps Could Spark New Era of Innovation

Customizing applications has not been for the faint of heart. The process has been quite challenging and expensive. Projects typically go way over on time-to-delivery and budget with no guarantee of success. As a result, many businesses have avoided customization to simply ‘make do’ with what’s available off the shelf. That complacency is about to change as ‘disposable apps’ begin to emerge.

We are starting to see smart vendors offer code-free, drag-and-drop tools that enable businesses to quickly develop applications within the platform for departmental or single-use functions. Some organizations are even building apps for specific events or seasonal activities, thus the ‘disposable’ moniker.

Imagine an app supporting a seasonal sale or for a weeklong conference. That’s suddenly within reach. This approach lowers the skill hurdle to enable rapid design and development. It also reduces time on testing and quality assurance, leading to accelerated delivery. It just might wake the industry up.

While several smaller vendors have been vocal proponents for years, Salesforce.com just gave disposable apps a huge boost this week by announcing Salesforce Lighting Components and App Builder along with AppExchange for Components to spur businesses to develop their own customized Salesforce apps. IBM has also been an advocate. We expect to see more vendors embrace the disposable concept to enable more customization.

In fact, despite the prohibitive costs and challenges, the industry has been moving toward a more customized model. Nucleus has measured the benefits for custom application development over the past 20 years from pure coding to Web services and service-oriented architectures. At each new step the relative time, cost and skill required to build a custom app drops. Nucleus recently estimated that the code-free component approach could reduce design and development time by as much as 80 percent (https://nucleusr.wpengine.com/research/single/salesforce-lightning-released).

Perhaps we are finally hitting that tipping point where businesses can build applications quickly and at lower costs. And at a lower risk, which should spawn more innovation, stronger differentiation and better products and services. Yet another way for entrepreneurial businesses to buck the status quo and blaze new trails. Bring on the disposable app!