Bungee Labs has raised $8 million Series C in a round that included Wasatch Venture Fund and existing investors North Bridge Venture Partners and Venrock Associates. Orem, Utah based Bungee Labs offers Bungee Connect, a web-based Ajax environment for creating interactive web applications. Bungee Connect allows developers to “efficiently create and instantly deliver rich web applications for the small-to-medium business market” by providing an online environment where developers and clients don’t have to install anything. Bungee Connect also automates SOAP and REST based web services. See our February 2008 review of Bungee Connect here. Bungee Connect competes with DabbleDB, Zoho Creator, LongJump, Coghead and WyaWorks. Total funding to date was not available, with the previous rounds having been raised in August 2005 and November 2006. (via PEHub) CrunchBase Information Bungee Labs Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Yeah, we’ve seen a ton of online application builders before – DabbleDB, Zoho Creator, LongJump, Coghead and WyaWorks, among others. And Salesforce weighed in with their own Force.com in late 2007. Bungee Connect , which leaves private beta today, competes with all of these. But the company, based in Utah, thinks they have the advanced features to attract a much different audience than most of those startups. They’re targeting hard core developers, not non-developers who want a way to create simple software programs to solve problems at the office. Bungee Connect is a single online environment for developers to write, test, deploy and host applications. Like Force.com, it is a platform-as-a-service. The service is free until end users actually start using the products built and deployed on the service. Dana Gardner wrote an excellent overview of the service a year ago when Bungee Connect was first introduced. CrunchBase Information Bungee Labs Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
CRM and SaaS provider Salesforce.com have announced that there Force.com Cloud Computing Architecture (our review here) is to now offer Development-as-a-Service (DaaS), a new pricing structure and a developer competition. The DaaS service consists of a new set of development tools and APIs that allow enterprise developers to harness cloud computing. The tools offer full access to the database, logic and user interface capabilities of the Force.com Platform, unifying development and IT collaboration tools with Force.com Platform-as-a-Service. The new service includes a Metadata API, Integrated Development Environment (IDE), the Sandbox, and Code Share that all developers to build enterprise Software-as-a-Service applications. The new pricing model includes a pay-per-login utility pricing model for the Force.com Platform and Development-as-a-Service. The model offers a cheaper alternative to companies that may use applications in the cloud less often, in theory making the service more affordable to use. Force.com cloud (per login) has a list price is $5.00 per login with a maximum of 5 logins per user per month, and will be offered at $0.99 per login to the end 2008. For more frequent users (more then 5 logins per month) must sign up to Force.com’s unlimited pricing plan of $50 per user per month. Salesforce.com and Emergence Capital Partners have also announced a new competition, the Force.com $1 Million Challenge – a venture competition for entrepreneurs and companies building on the Force.com platform. Winners will receive a $1 million investment from Emergence Capital as well as space in Salesforce.com’s AppExchange Incubator facility for one year. The winner will be announced in November at Dreamforce 2008. → Read More
Every company in Silicon Valley wants to become a platform for other companies to build cool stuff on top of. It is the easiest way to attract customers. Coghead—the DIY, Web-based, business-app builder—is no different. Today it is publicly launching its charter affiliates program, whereby software developers can create their own enterprise apps using Coghead and then resell them to their customers. (The program has been in private beta since Coghead launched in October, 2006). Coghead hosts the apps and gives developers a 15 percent discount on its regular $49/month subscription fee (for five users). They build a custom application for software product managers or flower-shop owners or whomever, charge a markup, and get to keep the difference. Coghead takes care of the back-end management and billing as well. It is the exact same business model as Salesforce.com’s AppExchange. (Meanwhile, Salesforce is already moving into Coghead’s custom-application territory with Force.com, which it launched in September). Coghead faces other competition from Zoho Creator, Dabble DB, WyaWorks, and LongJump. The online database/app creation market is getting crowded, and there is only room for one or two platforms. Salesforce is already one of them. If Coghead can make it easier to develop Web apps for the enterprise than anyone else and attract a following, it’s got a shot at that coveted platform status. We’ll be keeping an eye on its progress. Has anyone used Coghead? How does it compare to the competition? Please let us know in comments. CrunchBase Information Coghead Dabble DB Zoho LongJump Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
We last wrote about LongJump back in June when their business application platform launched. Like Coghead, DabbleDB, Zoho Creator, WyaWorks, and SalesForce’s Force.com, LongJump lets programming novices design their own applications. To do so, LongJump provides a visual application creator and directory where users can share the apps they develop. Since launch, they have over 100 enterprise level customers. Unless you already have a large audience like SalesForece, relying on users to create applications on your platform makes the service is somewhat useless until someone creates one. So, as promised earlier, LongJump has seeded their platform with a suite of applications that can be remixed by their users. The suite consists of 13 business applications that will be free to use through the end of the year. The applications include a collaboration suite and tools for customer management, sales, HR, and Finance. Applications can be customized by anyone else. Customizations include adding or modifying new data objects such as creating a contact object or triggering new actions when information enters the system. For instance, if a contact is added, email the sales team about it. These modifications fork the application into your own private copy, which you can keep for yourself or share with others. The collaboration suite, OfficeSpace, is the most complex of the applications and lets users share personal and group calendars, assign tasks, store documents, and collaborate through wikis. Each of the functions is organized under its own tab, with a master dashboard where each user can puts widgets of the pieces they’re interested in. → Read More
Salesforce will enter the custom software market next week with the launch of Force (site will go live Monday morning), a new platform that will allow developers to create database driven applications and deploy them as services. So if Salesforce doesn’t offer what you are looking for, and no one has built it for you on Salesforce’s AppExchange, you can simply build it yourself using the Apex framework. At its core Force competes as a development platform with .NET, Java, etc. But there are also a slew of startups that have focused on allowing people to easily create and deploy database driven applications – DabbleDB, Zoho Creator, LongJump, Coghead and WyaWorks, among others. All will take a hit from Force. In fact, this may be sort of game ending for them. Salesforce has its eyes on much bigger fish than those startups. Any internal process or function that requires custom software may be a candidate for Force. Disney, which has been testing the platform, is using it to manage character (Mickey Mouse, etc.) appearances. EA has built a recruiting application. Bronx School is using Force to manage attendance, performance, etc. Salesforce says they can actually manage the entire school on Force. Salesforce is also announcing VisualSource, a set of tools that allow developers to build applications for multiple devices (tablets, iphone, etc.) and add HTML, AJAX and Flex to Force applications (making for much nicer looking and more user friendly applications). See the screen shot below for an example user interface. Pricing is a flat $25/month/user. Salesforce has always said its about software as a service. Next week, they say they’re deploying the platform as a service with Force. I imagine they’ll find a receptive customer base. → Read More
Wyaworks, a new startup, “aims to do for web development what blogging has done for publishing”. In other words, Wyaworks wants to help non-coders build usefull web applications. the “Wya”, by the way, stands for “write your apps”. Their first application is called WyaCracker, a form builder. The site is in private beta, but the beta access code can be requested by email from the “try the beta” link on the left sidebar. Wyacracker allows users to build simple web forms and publish them on websites or via email. Resulting data can be viewed on the site or exported to excel. It’s very rough on design, but the core functionality works. And unlike competitor Form Assembly, which is also a great form builder, its free (to be fair, Formassembly has much more robust functionality at this point). I really like applications like this that perform a task that is easy for coders but hopelesly complex for non-coders. I hope they give the site a redesign to allow the underlying application to shine, and I’m looking forward to future product releases. To see more on Wyaworks, check out Phil Sim’s Squash blog. → Read More
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