IDG Contributor Network: It's all about the search: AppDirect ponies up and acquires Xendo
One thing you can say about AppDirect, the company that powers a number of the biggest application marketplaces on the Web: Its timing is pretty impeccable.
AppDirect smartly (or luckily, depending on your perspective of the company's prescience) raised a truckload of cash over the past few years and, rather than blowing it all on frivolous things, has seemed to follow a careful strategy. That strategy sees it grow strongly, but appropriately, both through expansion of its own footprint and through acquisitions.
A few weeks ago while in Europe I managed to get myself invited to sit in on an AppDirect customer day in which some big European customers spent time talking with the company, but more importantly each other, about the issues in standing up and managing customer-facing application marketplace. While the stuff I heard was in-confidence, and I probably shouldn't divulge which companies were present, suffice it to say that AppDirect seems to be asking all the right questions, and listening intently to what its customers ask for.
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