IBM DevEngage: develop form apps easily
I’m very impressed with what IBM Research Lab based in Haifa, Israel, just came out with: an Ajax-powered web app that allows non developers to build form services.
I’ve been playing with IBM Development Engagement Service (lousy name though) and indeed, built in 3 simple & natural steps:
- Name your application and describe it (max. 3 minutes)
- Create a form definition (max. 45 minutes)
- Publish the newly created application (max. 2 minutes)
Even dummies are able to publish web forms in less than an hour.
Remember, I was talking a few days ago about PopFly – a killer web app made by Microsoft to empower non developers with a tool to help them devise their own mash ups.
Now it’s IBM’s turn. And I can assure you one can tell the elephant can dance indeed. To give IBM DevEngage a go – which I highly recommend, click here.
It’s late and I’m too tired to write a short analysis about software giants (IBM is second to Microsoft on the software market) putting on efforts to become more agile against the new competition from the web (mainly Web 2.0 consumer apps & enterprise SaaS). But I’m sure you’ll do it in the comment section of this post. Enjoy the discussion!
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Books, Business strategy, Google, IBM, Internet, Israel, Java, MNC, Microsoft, Software, USA, innovation, user-generated content
In a way I find it worrying that these kind of “create your own web 2.0 just by dragging and dropping” tools are popping up at a growing rate recently.
As anyone knows, it is rarely that easy. Jeremy, as you’ve pointed out many times, good developers are hard to find.
Don’t get me wrong, I find these tools cool. The problem is that they are never real substitues for “good code”. I’m sure you can get nice demos out of this and Popfly, but not anything new. Of course, I’d like to see myself proved wrong.