Who wants to write some code? “Not Me” says the Business Man (or Woman)!

Business men want to run businesses and not write code. They want rich applications with colorful reports slicing and dicing the latest data from various sources and full proof security with permission based access. And of course, they don’t want to pay a dime for any of these to any software developer even if he/she is sitting in some dingy cube in a remote corner in a desolate Indian city!

Location:  Menlo Park, CA 94025 
Founded:  May 2003
Total Funding:  11.2 Million 
Management Team:  Paul McNamara, Greg Olsen 

My Take:  Thumbs Up 

Enter the Tech-Savvy Business Man. They want to roll up their sleeves and delve right into building one such business application for themselves, without having to write a single line of code!Thanks to startups like CogHead, this is quickly becoming a reality, although the current state of such application development tools has a long way to go. It’s still not very easy to make a custom business application as it’s to create a new Powerpoint Presentation file but it’s getting there.

Creating a simple database driven business application like an Asset Tracker is a breeze. The product’s depth is shown by the ease of specifying rules and permissions. Ability to configure it to allow anonymous or authenticated access resolves security issues while an extended API provides additional control and customization. The application so created, is intuitively called a ‘Coglet’ and can be embedded in any web page.

Although the business applications from SalesForce.com are much more savvy and sophisticated, they also cost a bundle! Coghead provides a good viable alternative.Thus, all in all, CogHead is definitely heading towards a new powerful way of creating database driven business applications but it still has to figure out the right mix of functionality with pricing to get the mass adoption.