The embracing of Amazon is an obvious strategy for a startup that doesn’t want to get distracted by the need to invest in infrastructure. Frankly, there’s no other way Coghead could scale up to match Salesforce’s data centers anytime soon. As for Adobe Flex, it is becoming the obvious de facto standard alternative to Microsoft for Rich Internet Application client platforms for anybody that aims to compete with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live with client side platforms that are more robust than what Ajax can deliver. Not surprisingly, Salesforce.com has also embraced Adobe Flex in a marriage of convenience.

It’s part of a gradual coming out party for the SAP Ventures-backed SaaS provider which launched its first release less than a year ago. Not surprising, given SAP’s venture backing, Coghead positions itself as an extender of enterprise applications. That’s far different from the obviously better known Salesforce.com, which is seeking to replace those apps, not to mention Microsoft as well with its bid to become the de facto enterprise business applications platform.

And if you look through the rest of the SAP ventures portfolio, it’s clear that Coghead, just like AmberPoint (which applies SOA governance), Intalio (an open source BPM environment), Ping Identity and others perform the same roles.

Over the past nine or so months that the company has had product, it has drawn roughly 25,000 users who have kicked the tires, of which a vast minority are paying customers (few early stage companies ever disclose their paid customer lists).

Coghead has drawn nearly a dozen partners that cover niches beyond where household names like SAP or Oracle penetrate, such as the private equity market. The strategy is that, as the barriers to entry are lowered (with the development, deployment, and integration platform taken care of), that systems integrators can more readily make money in the packaged applications business in markets too narrow for the big boys.

Coghead itself has released roughly 20 or so mini applications, which are really more business application widgets that you piece together to form full applications. And it promotes itself with the neat catch lines, “Think it. Build it. Share it.”

The idea that you can build or put together a real business application quickly is part of an emerging trend that Gartner calls Integrated Service Environments, and Forrester dubs Dynamic Business Applications (Gartner’s definition is more platform-focused, while Forrester defines its vision by the result, rather than the delivery platform).

Our vision is what we term Rapid Enterprise Composition, which is based on the premise of a strictly-managed, visual composition environment that enables business people to readily piece together applications or orchestrate business processes in a sandbox where enterprise policies are strictly enforced. Providers like Coghead are seeking to deliver the glue using industry standards (such as web services) where they exist, and proprietary frameworks where the standards leave off.

It’s an area being targeted by:

• *  BPM vendors and wannabees are targeting as they embrace direct deployment (e.g., make BPMN or similar models directly executable without having to go through an interim code generation step);

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  At this point, Coghead has yet to provide the closed loop management, but it could partner easily with other SAP Venture portfolio companies like AmberPoint, Ping Identity to provide part of the answer. But its more immediate sights are likely to be on developing a stronger integration and partnering story.

   

  
  

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