Business App Developers Can Learn a Thing or Two from Online Gaming (or MMOG)
Posted by alharlow on March 20, 2011
At iNamics, we build business applications (apps) which are hosted in the Cloud – typically on our Cloud, which is a private, secure network versus a public, you-take-your-chances network. The online application we’re most famous for, and what got us started, is www.careershift.com, which is now licensed by over 120 Universities and schools nationwide (and growing), with version 5.0 about to be launched.
I’m very proud of the work we’ve done. Thousands on people benefit from this work everyday by logging in and using our business apps, including some iPhone and mobile apps. But I think we can always do better and am looking to continue being a leader, not follower, in this very competitive and crowded industry of Internet and mobile app development.
We need to do better because there is always something coming around the corner, that could potentially knock us out and take our place. I will do everything possible to prevent this from happening, so one of the ways to accomplish this is by staying ahead of the curve, or “bleeding edge” as some like to refer to it.
I’ve always said that I wanted CareerShift to be a “destination app”. By that I mean I want users to look forward to using it, where they’re excited about it. It’s an end-of-the-day destination, the last thing you do, like logging into Facebook and checking up on your friends.
Destination apps today, for example, are Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube, I think. But now there are online gaming apps which more and more are becoming dominant as activities people do in their spare time. I for one am (admittedly) addicted to www.pokerist.com, but there are many like Farmville, Halo, Call of Duty and Crysis 2, just to name some.
What makes online gaming fun is the social aspects of it. There are massive amounts of people interacting and engaged in a common goal — all in a virtual setting. Pokerist.com for instance, will have at any one time, over 10,000 users from all over the world actively engaged, having conversations and playing Texas Hold’em.
Not to get two technical, but these MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming) apps can be considered SaaS/PaaS (Platform As A Service) hybrids. This emergence, from a technologist’s standpoint, is exciting; especially when you consider what the possibilities are in using this approach when enhancing and improving online business apps for the Cloud.
At iNamics, most of our developers are gammers, which for me, makes the opportunities even more exciting when we begin to come up with enhancements (updates) to our customers’ apps.
There is no doubt, we have a thing or two to learn from online gaming. I believe in the next year, you will see new features and updates to CareerShift, for instance, which add aspects of MMOG to truly make it a destination app, and from this, more benefits will be realized by our users.
The author of this post, Al Harlow, is President and CEO of iNamics Corporation, a leader in website development, hosting and computer repair in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. To contact him, or to learn more about this subject matter and “Affordable, Reliable I.T. Services, Products and Support“, go to www.iNamics.com. This blog is also published at http://inamics.wordpress.com.
