IBM yesterday announced its intention to develop and deploy a web-based application marketplace called the "Blue Business Platform" targeted primarily at the SMB market. The "Platform" will include pre-integrated applications developed by IBM itself as well as third party offerings, presumably ones which also integrate with IBM's own software and which don't offer too much competition. Applications purchased will be able to be run on premises or in the cloud... presumably a cloud of IBM's own devise.

This seems to be an effort which aims to duplicate Salesforce's AppExchange marketplace, where third party developers are free to hawk wares which extend or support the Salesforce platform. While there has been some debate over how successful AppExchange has actually been at enabling third party developers to expand their business around Salesforce's periphery, you have to wonder what exactly IBM can bring to the table to rival the Salesforce shark in luring ISV remorra. I'm not suggesting that the platforms are competing at all; simply that, whatever success AppExchange has had, it's been primarily due to the initial appeal of the Salesforce offering, and if IBM isn't providing something similarly compelling (and I have to hope they're not going to try to make it Lotus), then what hope to ISV's have to piggyback on the platform?