1) on self-managed infrastructure running the Bungee Application Server;

2) on the multi-tenant Bungee Grid at datacenters in the United States, Europe;

3) on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), but managed by Bungee Labs.

Here's a graphic that illustrates this:

The pricing model is also attractive, and according to Bungee Labs spokespeople, much cheaper than Salesforce:

Bungee Labs is also looking into making some of their community source code available, for the Bungee Application Server under several software source code licenses. They have made two software licenses available in draft form for review and discussion. However they are not keen to completely open source the platform.

All of these moves - the federated hosting, utility pricing model, looking into open source - are designed to find ways to differentiate Bungee Connect in what is a tough SME market dominated by Salesforce and other big companies like Oracle and Microsoft. We were told that Bungee has 3,500 developers on its platform currently, which suggests that it needs to find ways to get more developer support and build its brand against stiff competition. Right now Bungee Connect is a sophisticated technical platform - we have covered it now 3 times on RWW, so it's obviously impressive - but one gets the feeling that competing against established brands like Salesforce requires innovative marketing too.

Federated hosting, low pricing and perhaps eventually open sourcing parts of the platform are good moves - but the bottom line is that those features need to attract new customers. It'll be worth checking back on Bungee Labs again at next year's Web 2.0 Expo!

PaaS?

You may have heard about SaaS (Software-as-a-Service), but what is PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service)? According to David Mitchell, Founder and CTO at Bungee, cloud-based services like storage-as-a-service, CRM-as-a-service, and computing-as-a-Service are just the beginning of software and computing in the cloud. In order to be a true platform, all the systems and environments comprising the end-to-end lifecycle of developing, testing, deploying, and hosting web applications must be present. And when all of those items are present in the cloud, you have a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).

Bungee Connect

The Bungee Connect platform is Bungee Labs' implementation of this idea of cloud-based development. Unlike services that "dumb down" development so any user can build apps (think Yahoo Pipes, Popfly), Bungee Connect is meant for professional developers. The applications that Bungee Connect can be used to build are highly interactive, secure, and reliable desktop-like apps that can use multiple web services and databases in a single, on-demand environment.

Bungee Connect Builder Screenshot

Bungee apps can be embedded in other web applications and pages, SaaS solutions, or delivered as stand-alone web destinations. IT Managers can even securely web-enable their in-house apps on existing servers. An IT Manager who uses Bungee to bring an in-house web app to their mobile users only needs http/https enabled in their firewall, nothing more, and the only connection is to the Bungee Grid itself, not each and every end user.

Why Use Bungee's PaaS?

Since Bungee Connect is an end-to-end service, applications aren't built in one environment and deployed in another. Instead developing, debugging, testing, and deploying all occurs within the same environment, making application development faster...much faster.

WideLens

Bungee claims that their service can reduce time-to-market by as much as 80%. As a test, they developed a reference application called WideLens, an online calendaring app that connects to Microsoft Exchange calendar, Google Calendar, Salesforce.com, Facebook, MySQL and iCalendar feeds. This app represents several different types of protocols and authentication schemes including WebDav, gData, SOAP, REST, and MySQL. WideLens connects to each source in real-time and presents users with live data. And while the app itself sounds incredibly useful, what's even more incredible about it is the time it took to build:

• 3 hours to integrate Salesforce
• 1 day to integrate facebook
• 13 weeks total development time, start-to-finish

WideLens Calendar Screenshot

Bungee Connect and all applications built with it can be accessed through Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari web browsers. They do not require any software download, installation, or plug-in.

Pricing

The service Bungee offers is free to use for development, collaboration, and test deployment. Developers only need pay when an app is used by others. Depending on usage, a cost of $2-5 per user per month is expected for heavily utilized business applications and only fractions of a cent for e-commerce transactions. During the public beta, all apps will be hosted for free.

Conclusion

Bungee's extensive feature list, which includes a single, on-demand environment, automated integration of web services, built-in team collaboration & testing, built-in scalability, reliability, and security, and a utility pricing model, make Bungee Connect a robust and ambitious new offering in cloud computing and development.

The only question that remains is whether developers trust the cloud enough to make a switch from their current set of trusted tools to a web-based platform.