Archer Technologies LLC Monday unveiled an online marketplace of on-demand applications, services and content that it said can help users build applications more quickly and easily and thus cut costs.

Overland Park, Kansas-based Archer decided to create the marketplace to meet demands of its Fortune 1000 customers for a way to easily share and access risk compliance and security applications built using Archer's SmartSuite Framework development tool set, said Jon Darbyshire, the company's president and CEO.

For example, Archer customer Morgan Stanley, a SmartSuite framework user, sought to access work done by another user to automate common business processes, he said. Archer's customer base includes 47 out of country's largest 50 financial services companies, several large telecommunications companies and pharmaceutical and retail giants like Pfizer, EBay and Target, according to Darbyshire.

"Our customers are telling us that they are trying to solve a lot of the same problems that other people are," he added. "If the exchange has something they need, they can download it and many times it is 100% ready to meet their needs. It dramatically cuts down on the development costs for the company."

Several Archer users have as many as 200 applications built with the framework in production now, he added. Using the exchange, Archer users can search and download applications placed in the marketplace by other users for their own use. Each application added to the marketplace is evaluated in Archer's labs to ensure that their quality, performance and ease of use, he added.

"If you download two applications, they will have a very similar look and feel," Darbyshire noted. "You can be secure that ... best practices around software development have been included."

Applications and services will be contributed both by Archer and its clients. Some applications contributed by users may be free, while Archer will charge an US$8,000 unlimited user license fee per application. Some users may opt to charge for the applications they have created as well.

Jeff Jenkins, vice president of information security governance and compliance for First American Corp. said that while Archer allows the company to gain an enterprise view of its compliance initiatives, the exchange will allow them to further expand that view by using applications built by others.

"The time savings we'll gain from downloading pre-built applications to address our business challenges will be significant," he noted in a statement.

Andrew Jaquith, senior analyst with the Yankee Group, added that emerging online communities like the exchange allow companies to share solutions that solve common problems to speed up application development while reducing costs.