Global CIO: The Case For Copying Apple's App Store

Manpower's IT team is adopting the App Store model internally, making it part of how technology runs in a global company. Should you?

Manpower CIO Denis Edwards is thankful for Apple's App Store. Three years ago, to do what he and his IT team want to do now, they would have had to explain a complicated concept about distributed development, a centralized software depository, shared services, and approval processes.

Now, he just points to the App Store and says "we want to do that, only for internal use," and people get it. And he wants to do it whenever Manpower adds new software for one business group that others might want to adopt. For background, Manpower is a more than $16 billion-a-year staffing company, so it's constantly trying to connect the right people with the right job openings. It has global business operations (82 countries) and also global IT teams, with development groups for every major national or regional market.