New community marketplace seeks cloud developers

Developers interested in coding projects for public cloud services have a new avenue to find work in the form of CloudSpokes, a community marketplace announced Monday by Appirio.

CloudSpokes is taking a cue from TopCoder, which for years has run application-development competitions. Like TopCoder, CloudSpokes’ to-be-formed community of developers will compete for prize money in connection with various coding jobs posted on the site.

[ Stay up to date on the key programming news and issues with InfoWorld’s Developer World newsletter. Sign up today! | Get the no-nonsense explanations and advice you need to take real advantage of cloud computing in InfoWorld editors’ 21-page Cloud Computing Deep Dive PDF special report. | Stay up on the cloud with InfoWorld’s Cloud Computing Report newsletter. ]]

Appirio, which provides products and services to companies wishing to adopt cloud technologies, will manage the community and is also putting up US$1 million in initial contest money.

It will give Appirio another way to serve customer needs along with its existing on and offshore teams, particularly for “types of work we don’t have bandwidth for,” said Dave Messinger, chief architect and evangelist for CloudSpokes. Messinger was formerly chief architect at TopCoder.

Some contests are already lined up as the site launches target technologies such as Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform, Google Apps and AppEngine, HTML5 and Twilio, according to a statement.

The difference between CloudSpokes and TopCoder is the former’s strict focus on public cloud services, versus on-premises application development, Messinger said.

Appirio expects the CloudSpokes community to grow quickly, with it ideally reaching 50,000 developers within a year, Messinger said.

Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris’s email address is Chris_Kanaracus@idg.com.