MOUNTAIN VIEW, US: Intuit Inc., recently announced that it has launched an open source community for developers interested in creating online applications for small businesses.

The community, at code.intuit.com, lets developers work with Intuit and each other to build Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS, applications that solve important small business problems on the Intuit Partner Platform.
The community is part of Intuit's commitment to provide an open and flexible Platform-as-a-Service that helps developers build SaaS businesses, said a press release.

The platform's recently announced Federated Application capability gives developers the ability to write applications using any programming language, host them on any cloud infrastructure, connect them to the Intuit Partner Platform and market them to millions of Intuit's small business customers.

"The Intuit Partner Platform is creating a connected and thriving small business ecosystem," said Alex Chriss, business leader of the Intuit Partner Platform.

"By adopting the open source model, we're enabling developers to collaborate with us to enhance their applications and the platform. As a result, small businesses would benefit from a better SaaS experience with Web applications that work together and solve real business needs."

The first Intuit-sponsored open source projects are designed to expand a shared infrastructure to make it easier for developers to integrate their applications with the Intuit Partner Platform.

The site would host and provide early access to code, toolkits and documentation for the Intuit Partner Platform, said the release.

By collaborating, sharing and improving platform components, developers can build their own businesses faster and easier and take advantage of the work of Intuit and their peers when building applications.

The company also announced that it would host an Intuit Partner Platform Cloud Jam to encourage third-party developers to collaborate with Intuit on a number of open source projects and speed up their efforts to add their own applications to the platform.