Farewall to PaaS Provider, Coghead
Coghead announced it was shutting it doors yesterday evening. For those unfamiliar with Coghead, it was a much talked about PaaS offering that offered an online application editor for rapid application development. They fell under the category of non-standard stack, a “4th generation language and runtime” (4GL) if you will. It seems that slow adoption coupled with the economic situation got the best of them. This is clearly a big problem for Coghead customers, and is indicative of why I don’t particularly like the “PaaS requires a new language/runtime/stack (pick and choose) because older runtimes and languages simply don’t work” statements. First, the notion that something like C# (or any .NET runtime language), Java, or Python can’t work is simply a problem with fundamentally understanding runtimes and what they can and cannot do. Second, new languages and stacks are generally dangerous unless they have MAJOR support from a large platform vendor. Why? Risk. Coghead is letting folks know they can access their data until April 30th, 2009. Unfortunately, data is not the application and any VARs, ISVs, or IT departments are up the creek without a paddle when it comes to the application itself. If the apps were built on some industry standard runtime, and the PaaS injected native SaaS into the applications, they would still retain the ability to run and use the code elsewhere (this is what SaaSGrid does). Last, some 4GL has a tough time leveraging existing code assets that your company may have invested thousands or millions into.
As for Coghead, it’s always a shame to see a startup go, despite our market approach differences. I wish the Coghead team the best of luck. Fortunately for customers, it didn’t take long for many of their competitors in the “WYSIWIG” DIY application platform space to come to the rescue:
There have also been a few development firms offering to ease the pain as well:
- Scio Consulting (Full disclosure, Scio is a partner of ours at Apprenda)
- DeliveredInnovations
While it’s great to see that there are options for Coghead’s customers, it also causes me wonder once again why anyone would want to lock themselves into a full non-standard stack offering? Granted, I have a bias as one of the creators of SaaSGrid, because our model is the exact opposite. However, our model is the exact opposite because we didn’t even see that as a reasonable approach to doing business and this is a clear example of why. A startup should focus on ensuring that it’s customers are safe and are not sinking time and money into something that cannot function outside of that runtime. If you’re building ontop of a runtime that does not have a natural “fail safe”, take a lesson from what’s going on here.
Is my fear of non standard languages overblown? Is reducing risk a better ‘key feature’ of a 3GL based PaaS, or is the fact that it can leverage existing software assets the more appealing attribute? If you are a Coghead customer, have you found alternatives yet?
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