Zoho recently launched a new product named Zoho Creator, which is basically an IDE for Google App Engine (GAE). I have previously tinkered with Google App Engine, creating just a really simple app. App Engine is different from Amazon’s portfolio of cloud computing services because it’s really a platform (using Google’s “LAMP“-like stack), as opposed to a discrete utility service like S3 and EC2. Programming GAE is more like programming for Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform, except GAE is a lot less proprietary.
One of App Engine’s drawback is that it only supports one programming language: Python. With this new offering from Zoho, no coding is required (see video clip below). Naturally, my first instinct is that this is similar to a Web site editor (e.g. DreamWeaver, et al). You can slap together an OK-quality static Web pages, but anything more complicated, like creating a dynamic “shopping cart” function would probably still require that you popping the hood and getting your hands dirty with the lower level details for more granular controls.
At any rate, I still think that this is a great step forward for cloud computing/Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) because it’s lowering the barrier to entry for non-expert users. That’s one of the signs of a mature technology product: when non-experts can use it with ease. We’re not there yet, but we’re definitely making good strides.
Tags: cloud computing, google, google app engine, paas, saas, zoho