This guest post was contributed by Pankaj Malviya, a serial entrepreneur with more than 15 years experience in enterprise software product design, development, and implementation of customer service solutions for Fortune 500 companies. In 2006, Pankaj founded LongJump, a Platform-as-a-Service provider that helps companies rapidly develop and deliver customized applications online (see our coverage of LongJump here). It’s time for corporate IT to get their heads in the clouds. Cloud computing initiatives are gaining momentum with businesses of all sizes, particularly with enterprises that are looking to adopt the right solutions to address their ongoing business and IT challenges. Emerging on the horizon is a broad range of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings that enterprise business and IT units are examining more thoroughly. PaaS solutions are appealing as a direct evolution of SaaS-based, single-discipline solutions that are targeted toward the horizontal enterprise. Why should corporate IT departments rely on the costly, time-intensive maintenance of heavy infrastructure and continually reinvent the wheel to create powerful applications? PaaS offers a simple promise: develop, deploy and fine-tune enterprise-class SaaS applications within a single environment across all business units. The net effect is a more cost-effective, centralized way to extend, build and manage custom applications. Thus IT is free to focus on innovating solutions that engage knowledge workers in increased productivity and collaboration and improve overall business efficiency. PaaS also affects the economics of application development, providing a faster time-to-value for developing, deploying and integrating custom applications, resulting in a more than 50 % improvement on productivity for total platform spend per dollar, according to McKinsey & Co. As such, corporate IT has an important leadership role in applying PaaS. Unlike single-department SaaS tools where a business unit may have had primary say for functionality, adoption and manageability, PaaS has a cross-departmental impact within an organization. It’s critical for corporate IT, and not just the business units themselves, to fully understand these different platforms and provide the governance and manageability needed to sustain their value. Otherwise, it can become yet another rogue technology that IT will have to deal with, rather than the leveraged solution it promises to be. Current PaaS providers offer many components resulting in widely different PaaS offerings that can be broken down into three buckets: Delivery platforms such as Amazon EC2 or Google’s App Engine that provide a cloud environment for developers to host their applications. Development platforms that offer cloud-based integrated → Read More
When Salesforce rolled out its software development platform, Force.com, last year, we called it a “game ender” for several other startups helping people create and deploy applications as web services.
Among these was LongJump, which has enabled businesses and individuals to create web applications using visual tools since early summer 2007. Today, LongJump strikes back at Force.com by adding a coding environment to its own suite of developer tools. → Read More
LongJump, a hosted applications environment that competes with the likes of Salesforce and Coghead, is introducing a new visual workflow system meant to streamline business processes. Companies will be able to set up this workflow system in conjunction with existing LongJump applications, such as those that track businesses’ assets or contracts. Before the introduction of this workflow system, these applications could be used to manage databases of relevant objects. Now they can also be used to program and execute on procedures that regularly occur around them. Do expense requests usually go through your company’s hierarchy before getting approved? You can now chart this process in LongJump with “states” and “actions”, respectively represented as circles and vectors in the visual workflow creation tool. Each circle represents a type of person within the company (supervisor, manager, CEO, etc) that must make a decision on the expense request (approve, deny, issue check, etc). These decisions cause the request to travel along the vectors until a final conclusion to the process (request fulfilled). This process would ordinarily be accomplished over email or even physical slips of paper that make their way through various “in” and “out” boxes around the office. Now it can all be handle in one central online location with variously designated user accounts for employees. LongJump says that its visual workflow solution is the first to come integrated with a full-featured database application suite. Competitors include Appian (a hosted solution) and Tibco Business Studio (non-hosted), but these must be used with something like Oracle or SAP. Since many large corporations are happy with their existing database solutions, this new workflow product will appeal mostly to small and medium-sized businesses. CrunchBase Information LongJump Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
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
LongJump, an SaaS offering that enables ordinary people to build and customize database-centric applications (for sales, marketing, IT, HR, finance, etc.), has launched a new offering dubbed “Database-as-a-Service (DaaS)” that allows the more technically literate to build applications with databases in the “cloud” (i.e. stored on LongJump’s servers). The company is comparing its new offering to Amazon’s S3 cloud storage service, because both remove the burden of having to maintain servers locally. In LongJump’s own words, DaaS shines by “cutting the costs and easing the hassles for entrepreneurs and developers who would otherwise have to purchase a database server, provision it, address data access and availability issues, manage backup and replication issues, and tackle security and data protection.” Most of LongJump’s value has hitherto been relevant for the type of people who don’t have the expertise or initiative necessary to develop applications the old fashion way (i.e. actual programming), so it’s interesting to see the company introduce a service intended for precisely the opposite sort of person. The DaaS service can be used either to design applications that use the same data accessed by LongJump applications themselves, or it can be used apart from such applications to deploy wholly disconnected projects. LongJump, with access to its REST-based API included, costs $24.95 per user per month, or $19.95 per user per month with a 12-month commitment. Competitor SalesForce has a similar type of API but one which is SOAP-based. LongJump’s offering differs from Amazon’s newly released SimpleDB service by functioning as a MySQL-based relational database service, whereas SimpleDB possesses its own architecture. For more information on LongJump’s API, check out the company’s API guide. CrunchBase Information LongJump Information provided by CrunchBase → 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
Just over a year ago DabbleDB launched, allowing people to create quick database driven applications with very few programming skills. Since then we’ve seen Zoho Creator, WyaWorks and Coghead launch their own competing applications. Salesforce AppExchange is arguably also a competitor, as are a number of other build-your-own-apps like Yahoo Pipes, Teqlo and Microsoft Popfly. This is a crowded space, and there’s a reason for it. These tools let non-developers create useful and otherwise expensive applications for busineses that can be accessed directly or via the intranet. They can also be tailored to an infinite degree, giving companies more flexibility with off the shelf stuff. Most of these tools also allow for simple web application building as well, from simple web forms to more complicated, interactive applications. LongJump, which launches today, is the newest entrant. The new service is a spinoff of an already profitable business, Relationals, which was founded in 2003. The founder, 37 year old Pankaj Malviya, says the company needs no additional funding in the near future. LongJump is focused on letting people create applications without any programming skills whatsoever – something Coghead is also striving for. In a demo yesterday I watched Malviya create a couple of applications very quickly, including a highly customized shared contact and calendar resource for a business. LongJump is also approaching their community in a realy smart way – like Ning, applications can be shared with other LongJump users, cloned, and customized. Sharing is optional, and all business data is stripped out and replaced with sample data. But in the near future users will be able to build on what others have created, giving LongJump a nice library of sample applications. The ease of use combined with the community sharing features are really thoughtful additions to the product. We’ll check back in with them in a couple of months and see how the library of applications is coming along. → Read More
