New Cloud Platforms Proliferating

Financial software publisher Intuit is opening its Quickbase platform to developers. Quickbase features an online database that developers can use to create and sell add-on Web apps atop QuickBooks. Smoothspan and Webware have reviews and screenshots.

On Tuesday 10gen Inc. announced it has begun the alpha testing phase of its new cloud computing platform, which has been running the Silicon Alley Insider blog. 10gen was developed by DoubleClick alumni Kevin P. Ryan, Dwight Merriman and Eliot Horowitz, and is an object-oriented application server designed to help developers more easily build and deploy scalable Web applications hosted on large grid computing environments. "We offer a turnkey solution that provides all the building blocks needed to create complex, high-volume sites at drastically reduced costs with considerably less time and effort," said Kevin Ryan, 10gen's CEO.

Platform-as-a-service provider Coghead introduced the Coghead Gallery, an open-market exchange for developers to publish applications created with Coghead. Mashable has an overview.

InfoWorld reports that Sun Microsystems (JAVA) executives have begun speaking publicly about Project Caroline, the company's a platform-as-a-service model. Project Caroline currently exists in a grid in a data center in Burlington, Mass., McClain said. There is no set date on when or if Sun would make a product out of Caroline technology.

TechCrunch noted the appearance of two more cloud-based backup services, Syncplicity and AllMyData, as part of a broader look at the increasingly crowded online backup market.