Much like how the stockphoto.com website opened up the Internet to photographers who want to share or sell their photos, Darrell Trimble and Earl Libby have worked to create the same thing for developers of SharePoint application templates and Web Parts.
Trimble is a partner and Libby is CTO of SharePoint Marketplace, and they’ve put together a process that assembles quality application packages and brings them to market at reasonable prices. Trimble came from the CRM service desk world, where he saw that “folks wanted less-expensive versions of these applications, but there wasn’t anyplace to get them.” Further, he noted, “We had developers who had created applications but had no marketing arm.”
In the next few weeks, the team will be announcing application templates as they come out, providing the foundation for users to create overall application solutions from the available pieces in the marketplace. Longer term, they also will be rolling out catalogs listing available templates, Web Parts and training.
But beyond that, Trimble said they want the SharePoint Marketplace to combine elements of a community as well, where buyers could suggest solutions to be built and a place for reviews. There also will be an area for blogs and videos.
For those of you working in Office 365, or considering doing so, SharePoint Marketplace will be launching an Office 365 cloud-enabled Web Parts catalog, with multi-tenancy capabilities built in as it is developed.
“We want to spur on the community for sharing,” Trimble said.
Developers need to keep their eyes peeled as this site is built out, to either release their Web Parts or apps into the wild, or to productize and make some money off of them.
David Rubinstein is editor of SPTechReport.
