Watch Out Salesforce. Intuit Opens Up QuickBase To Developers
Intuit is joining a crowded field. Salesforce.com has its AppExchange and Force.com. Amazon has its Web services, including SimpleDB. Google just launched its App Engine. And startups like Coghead are also angling for position.
But Intuit already has a lot of small business customers that, in turn, can help it attract developers to its new platform. Bill Lucchini, the general manager of Quickbase tells me:
It is great to have a cool piece of technology, but we have to make sure that developers build successful businesses. Giving them the tools to get in front of our customers is strategy No. 1
He realizes that decent technology is just table stakes. Developers will get access to QuickBase via APIs to use as a foundation for their apps, and they also get hooks into QuickBooks, Intuit’s accounting software that is used by nearly 25 million individuals in 3.6 million businesses in the U.S. alone. Developers will be able to build apps using Adobe Flex and the open-source Eclipse development environment. For the technically-minded, here is a screencast that goes into more details.
Although the economics have yet to be fully worked out, Intuit plans to charge using a utility model similar to Amazon’s that goes up the mnore resources a developer’s app consumes. Says Lucchini:
We are trying to price these things where developers can charge $10 to $20 per user per month and make a profit. Small businesses are pretty price sensitive.
The Web platform wars are in full swing. Which platform will developers flock to for enterprise apps?