US company Coghead has rolled out a hosted service that can be used by developers to sell applications created using the company's "do it yourself" web application development technology .
The new Coghead Gallery is aimed at leveling the playing field for a broad class of companies that build applications, but lack the capital to compete against ISVs, says Paul McNamara, CEO of Coghead.
Publishers can add the applications they have created with Coghead's tool to the Gallery through two different models.
The Open Definition model allows any application creator to publish applications that anyone can freely modify, distribute and use.
"We want to create a community of developers that benefit from interacting with each other," McNamara says. "Communities can form and that Darwinian model can develop where people glom on to really good ideas and lesser ideas sink to the bottom. This free model is a great way to acquire customers at a very low cost."
The Protected Definition Model allows Coghead business partners to create applications that can be sold to end users via a storefront they open on Coghead.
"We're really targeting the small independent development shops as our key partners," McNamara says. "We want to enable these firms to become SaaS companies overnight without needing to raise a lot of money. They can use their knowledge of customer problems to create an application that they can deliver on a worldwide basis to lots of customers."
Coghead already has 30 partners signed up to use the gallery under this arrangement, McNamara says.
"Coghead helped me create a new business model that enables me to do what I do best — create custom applications — and extend beyond my geographical region without additional operational expenses," says Christopher Shockey, lead developer at Hekademia Consulting.
"Coghead has a sophisticated development platform that enables me to create custom, online applications, and the new Gallery gives me marketing and subscription-management resources I need to run a successful SaaS business," Shockey says.