Coghead’s PaaSing
Thursday, February 19, 2009 10:13 by dChengIt was revealed last night by TechCrunch that one of our platform-as-a-service competitors ran out of funding and is closing its doors. While on one hand it is heartening to see someone in your space, who has done a commendable job helping to bring attention to the space, take such an unfortunate turn, it has also made it even more clear that our approach is the right thing to do.
PaaS is still a game changer, but I really believe that PaaS companies need to have a stabilizer in order to survive. Selling an app platform is a touchy thing. It’s like selling ideas, not some canned product with a few extra options. You don’t walk into a Walmart and pick up an application platform and some milk. That’s because PaaS requires effort on the part of the buyer — an investment of thought, ingenuity and energy at a time when budgets are in the dumper.
If you don’t have a second source of income or a VC sugar daddy who is in it for the long haul, you will see things like this — essentially a failed marriage between funding and business model.
As a competitor, I can truly say that Coghead was a pretty good platform. What they were able to do with public widgets was impressive and their outreach to ISVs definitely filled a market void. But it was starting up as a platform company, not a solution company and any inroad into serious businesses requires real application solutions that capture the power of the platform.
If someone were looking to put their eggs into a platform-as-a-service for a solution, they should take a look at the company itself and make sure it’s viable. Otherwise, yes, there is a risk. Even the heavily touted Salesforce.com has it’s own traditional revenue stream to offset the costs of a PaaS push and their platform is also a risk to lock-in, customer ownership, etc.
We’re proud to say that LongJump has never raised a dime of VC funding, we’re a profitable operation thanks to not firing up all engines all the time, a suitable other line of business in both Relationals and LongJump.com, and we’re making hey with our platform play by listening to customers tell us what they need. And we shall continue to strive by making the platform meet the needs of the businesses it intends to serve, not the other way around.
“Get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’”
Alain Yap says:
February 23rd, 2009 at 12:52 am
Your idea about PaaS is sad but true. Despite the tech innovations, platforms will need widespread enterprise adoption, not just ISV’s and medium-sized business, in order to survive early on.
Good to hear that Longjump is doing quite well and best of luck for continued growth. It won’t be surprising if Coghead isn’t the last one to fold.
Best.
Alain Yap
Morph Labs
Jane McCarty says:
February 25th, 2009 at 5:54 am
Can’t help but agree with Alain, it’s not the last start up that we see going down. Well, obviously living in the Cloud is not that safe as expected. Anyway, the data must be moved to a better place. And one way or another former Coghead customers have to choose form vendors, which developed special migration offer:
http://webappsatwork.blogspot.com/2009/02/helping-coghead-customers.html
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) by LongJump » Standardizing Cloud Computing says:
February 26th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
[...] tech media’s reaction to Coghead’s folding has bubbled up the perception that suddenly we cloud computing and platform-as-a-service [...]
Cloud Computing Daily Views · Coghead post-mortem says:
March 4th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
[...] cogheads-paasing [...]
Dean says:
March 6th, 2009 at 8:42 am
CRM and Web Apps are a moving target…not only the platform, but the pricing strategy, user adoption, etc…Coghead was a great way to gain access to Adobe Flex — but just couldn’t find a way to make “bank” with it. Nice job Coghead! You can ride off into the sunset with your heads held high. I was glad to see that Longjump made the move to full on CRM versus satellite Applications…you have to start with the core functionality…