Frank Zamani, who’s the CEO of Caspio, turned an Excel spreadsheet into a searchable, editable, password protected online database while we chatted on the phone. It looked easy; there was no coding involved. GE uses his app building service (which is hosted at Verio), as do Sara Lee, Toshiba, the American Red Cross… Frank says it empowers non-programmers to create event registration forms, staff directories, product inventory databases, etc, all by themselves.
Caspio has been around since 2000 and powers over 40,000 apps, but now competition is heating up. Coghead announced its beta last week, and Teqlo has gotten lots of press since announcing former SAP strategist Jeff Nolan as its new CEO. Wufoo falls in the same category as well. There’s also Ning, where I was able to clone somebody else’s music ratings app in 30 seconds flat.
App builders are the new black – and there’s a reason for that. Just about every hosting provider I’ve spoken to recently has complained about churn. And “service not in use” is the #1 reason customers give for closing their accounts. Unfortunately, static brochure-ware websites typically aren’t part of customers’ workflows. They’re seen as non-mission-critical marketing initiatives. Interactive web-apps, on the other hand, have the potential of playing central roles in customers’ daily operations.
Last night I did a quick survey of a dozen or so shared hosting providers, and it looks like 1&1 is the only company that offers an app building tool. Everybody else has some catching up to do…
