Frevvo Enables Dynamic Web Applications

Frevvo, which offers systems for developing rich Internet applications, has released an SAAS-enabled solution that creates Web forms.

Announced May 12, Live Forms is especially suited to creating forms that meet short-term business needs.

"Business applications depend on forms," said Frevvo CEO Ashish Deshpande. "A spectrum of applications on one end consists of short-lived, relatively simple applications based on short-term business needs."

Deshpande said it takes too long to send out this kind of application to be developed by a company's IT department, so power users will create their own "situational applications" using domain knowledge. In addition, he said users interact with applications for long-term BPM (business process management) functions via forms, creating an overall demand for forms.

He said Live Forms is an entirely Web-based form design solution that is SAAS (software as a service)-enabled and works in a browser.

"You can download it on our own server or behind your own firewall," Deshpande said.

Deshpande said Live Forms offers a rich, AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)-based user experience with XML support, and allows users to run form coding and instructions with drag and drop functionality.

"It works with data, has built-in business capabilities and rules [and] complete validation, and is easy to embed," he said.

James Tenser, principal of retail and brand marketing technology consulting firm VSN Strategies, said the concept behind Frevvo would make building Web forms an easier process than using CGI (Common Gateway Interface) scripts.

Using Frevvo, "Once you a build a form, you can save it as an object and put it on your Web site," Tenser said. "It would be like having a gadget on your Web site, but you don't have to bother setting up a SQL server behind it."

Tenser said Frevvo reminds him of other hosted Web services he has used, such as Constant Contact for e-mail management and SurveyMonkey for creating and administering surveys.

"You can build an application on their server and then connect easily from your own," he said. "It's a fascinating idea."

Tenser said Frevvo may be particularly useful to small enterprises that are currently paying a Web hosting service more than the basic cost of hosting to have forms developed for them.

By partnering with providers of BPM, SOA (service-oriented architecture), SOI (service-oriented infrastructure), enterprise social software, and Web site building and hosting technologies and services, Deshpande said Frevvo can provide Live Forms as a complete development solution.

Dan Berthiaume covers the retail space for eWEEK. For more industry news, check out eWEEK.com's Retail Site.