They are providing an easy way to create a sandbox to code or learn to code.
A simple use case would be if you were to teach a class on coding that required a Linux environment to compile C, but the students brought their own laptops, you could
A. Struggle with all the possible laptop configurations and how to install VMs and/or the proper packages on those computers
or
B Use koding.com and have everyone do their projects on koding.com's VM so that everyone can focus on learning instead of configuring.
At the end of the project, you also get the added benefit that the tools used to validated homework and projects will be the same tools used to develop. This was a big problem when I was in school where students would develop on a rogue platform (ie. MS or OSX) and the TAs would compile and run the code on Linux and there would be build errors or run time errors for random configuration problems.
----
As for their business model, from what I can tell, they want to first create a universal platform for anyone that wants a linux sandbox to play, code, learn. Then they will charge businesses or universities that want to upgrade to have a lot of access or special VMs.
Indeed, this fits my use case to an absolute tee right now. I'm trying to pick up Rails, and doing anything related under a Windows environment is downright painful, and I'd rather not dualboot just to get into "work mode".
Why not spin up an Ubuntu VM in VMware or virtualbox? I'm not knocking the koding terminal, but "I want a Unix environment without dual-booting" is a fairly standard VMware use case.
Spinning up a Virtualbox, especially on a machine with low resources unfortunately is a kill. Besides the Terminal, Koding has features like private Groups, Collaboration, Online editor and so on. That means once you create and begin to use a VM, you can access it from everywhere without any hassle with just one login!
Pretty much took the first few words out of my mouth, there. The fact that this is accessible from any web browser I think is the killer feature. I can't install putty or access ssh on every machine I use.
A simple use case would be if you were to teach a class on coding that required a Linux environment to compile C, but the students brought their own laptops, you could
A. Struggle with all the possible laptop configurations and how to install VMs and/or the proper packages on those computers
or
B Use koding.com and have everyone do their projects on koding.com's VM so that everyone can focus on learning instead of configuring.
At the end of the project, you also get the added benefit that the tools used to validated homework and projects will be the same tools used to develop. This was a big problem when I was in school where students would develop on a rogue platform (ie. MS or OSX) and the TAs would compile and run the code on Linux and there would be build errors or run time errors for random configuration problems.
----
As for their business model, from what I can tell, they want to first create a universal platform for anyone that wants a linux sandbox to play, code, learn. Then they will charge businesses or universities that want to upgrade to have a lot of access or special VMs.