Genesys's app marketplace AppFoundry and developer portal DevFoundry have boasted rapid growth recently, with AppFoundry now offering more than 100 customer experience apps and DevFoundry now supporting more than 250 users. Jim Kraeutler, vice president of the innovation group at Genesys, atrtributes the growth to the vendor's commitment to educating partners and developers, and giving them flexible tools to build solutions.
"The key is making partners aware of the capabilities of the Genesys platforms through webinars, education, and other efforts. We want to create an open environment for our partners, where it's easier to build and develop solutions," Kraeutler says.
Kraeutler also points out that the growth is not only due to signing on new partners but also enabling existing partners to keep improving solutions and applications. "To get AppFoundry up and running, we went back to our existing partners to mine that base and help them see the opportunity through a direct path to market," he adds.
And when it comes to developers, Genesys works to arm them with necessary tools without requiring them to immediately invest in Genesys technology specifically. "They don't have to buy Genesys technology. [Once they demonstrate their needs,] we provide them with a cloud sandbox for a period of time and allow them to develop in the Genesys environment," Kraeutler explains.
As developers build mature solutions and prove successful, Genesys rewards its own through investment. At the end of last year, for example, Genesys acquired SpeechStorm, which started out as a partner in the ecosystem. Genesys is also preparing to announce a resale relationship with another partner from the AppFoundry ecosystem.
Overall, the vendor is hands-on with its partners and provides the kind of support required for growing companies to get on their feet, which Aaron Fulkerson, CEO of MindTouch, a Web self-service platform and AppFoundry member, emphasized in a statement:
"Through the AppFoundry program, MindTouch not only is getting a wider audience for our platform, but the AppFoundry team also worked with us to find the right Genesys partner to complete our initial integration to ensure rapid time to market without sacrificing quality."
Moving forward, Kraeutler says Genesys will continue growing its ecosystem with a commitment to fostering open innovation. "We just opened our cloud for integration to provide flexible opportunities for new and existing partners," he says.
Genesys also plans to share details about the upcoming introduction of its Web services API availability, both in the cloud and on-premises, at its developer conference next month in Toronto.