On the hunt for techies with entrepreneurial spirit, enterprise software developer AppSense announced today it formed a research division that has its epicenter at the company’s New York headquarters. AppSense Labs, as it is called, aspires to do more than hire new experts; it aims to disrupt the way the company’s technology is developed by adopting a more nimble strategy to compete with rivals.
“The model of innovation that is traditionally ‘enterprise’ doesn’t work anymore,” says Harry Labana, chief technology officer for Britain-born AppSense. “You’ve got to get new ideas out faster that may or may not fit into your core enterprise product.”
The new division, he says, will give the company an edge in technology development while also putting AppSense on the prowl for talent where it has offices in New York, Santa Clara, CA, and Britain’s Warrington. Shaking off some of the inertia common to enterprise technology may help the company be more versatile, Labana says. “We don’t see that many people focusing on making enterprise software cool and useable in a multiplatform world,” he says. “We’re focused on that problem moving forward.”
As more companies include smartphones and tablets in their IT tool boxes, enterprise software developers must change to embrace these devices, Labana says. That means finding developers and engineers with the skills to transform this sector. AppSense’s technology lets users within enterprises operate smoothly across different computing environments such as variations of Windows. Layoffs among financial institutions in New York, he says, presented an opportunity for
