Another Big Acquisition of a Crowdsourcing Platform - Appirio Buys TopCoder

 

Appirio today announced that it has acquired TopCoder, a crowdsource driven development and design community. By combining TopCoder's global capacity and design capability with CloudSpokes' expertise in cloud and advanced web technologies, Appirio and its customers now have access to nearly 600,000 of the world's best developers, designers and data analytics experts. 
"Appirio has embraced community development since the company's inception, and has proven that crowdsourcing is an effective way to increase innovation and more cost-effectively deliver solutions," said Chris Barbin, co-founder and CEO, Appirio. "The rise of the sharing economy is quickly rendering the traditional systems integration and offshore biased model obsolete. Together, the CloudSpokes and TopCoder communities offer more elastic development and design resources than Accenture, Deloitte and InfoSys combined."
I've been a firm believer in TopCoder's service ever since I was proven wrong when I hypothesized, "Everything can be crowdsourced except app development." In fact, app development has become a very effective use of crowdsourcing.
The acquisition will provide members of both developer communities with dramatically more opportunities to earn money while showcasing their respective skills and capabilities. As a part of the investment, CloudSpokes will add an additional track at the TopCoder Open happening November 10-14, 2013, for cloud development, as well as increases in prize money.
"The NASA Tournament Lab has partnered with TopCoder to tap into a global talent pool for algorithmic and software development," said Dr. Karim R. Lakhani, Principal Investigator of the Harvard NASA Tournament Lab. "The combination of the TopCoder community's breadth and depth of design and problem solving talent with CloudSpokes' cloud delivery model appears to create a unique offering in the technology solutions marketplace."
"TopCoder pioneered community-driven open innovation and has delivered design, development and analytics solutions for companies and governments for more than a decade," said Jack Hughes, founder, TopCoder. "We have admired Appirio for bringing together the best of cloud development and crowdsourcing. With the addition of TopCoder, Appirio will redefine what it means to deliver compelling, agile and innovative solutions to customers globally."
Narinder Singh, co-founder of Appirio, has been appointed president of the combined communities. TopCoder founder Jack Hughes will join Appirio's crowdsourcing advisory board. David Messinger, vice president of community at CloudSpokes, has been promoted to Chief Community Officer of the combined communities.


http://dailycrowdsource.com/crowdsourcing/news/1316-another-big-acquisition-of-a-crowdsourcing-platform-appirio-buys-topcoder