Gartner have predicted that Enterprise Mashups “will be the dominant model (80 percent) for the creation of new enterprise applications” listing them as one of the Top Ten Disruptive Technologies for 2008 to 2012. In May 2008 Forrester defined Enterprise Mashups as "custom applications that combine multiple, disparate data sources into something new and unique"  and projected that the enterprise mashup market will reach nearly $700 million by 2013. 

At the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston IBM provided a richer definition. In Enterprise Mashups - A Technical Deep Dive Nicole Carrier (Product Management Lead for Lotus Mashups) defined Enterprise Mashups as "a lightweight web application created by combining information or capabilities from more than one existing source to deliver new functions & insight."  and described the characteristics that are common amongst Enterprise Mashups:

• Rapid creation (days not months)
• Reuses existing capabilities, but delivers new functions + insights
• Requires limited to no technical skills
• Often mixes internal and external sources

IBM's presented real-world examples including a 'Rapid Response Mashup' from Boeing (used in emergency situations to  quickly identify the nearest airport that can safely handle an incoming aircraft based on aircraft's performance characteristics) and a 'Shipment Monitoring Dashboard' from Carrefour Group (used to locate and track shipments alongside piracy incidents and weather by combing internal and internet data). Both examples are featured in the presentation slides linked above.

Dion Hinchcliffe was one of the first to recognise the potential for Enterprise Mashups and has been tracking them for some time. In Enterprise mashups get ready for prime-time he discusses the key motivations for mashups within organizations, and how they differ from the mashups that emerged from the web. Building on this analysis Dion has continued to provide comprehensive coverage of the Enterprise Mashup market. Ahead of the Enterprise 2.0 Conference he outlined the latest Enterprise Mashup vendors, platforms and emerging standards in Mashups turn into an industry as offerings mature,

One of the biggest challenges for Enterprise Mashups is being able to unlock the data held in existing systems. IBM suggested that feeds provide the best mechanism for exposing this data. Atom feeds have many advantages over RSS feeds, and alongside the Atom Publishing Protocol they can be used to enable bi-directional Enterprise Mashups that can both read and write data. IBM have a technical summary of how this works in practice on their developerworks site: Create and edit Web resources with the Atom Publishing Protocol.  

The Enterprise Mashup market is maturing, and although there is still work to be done around interoperabilty and common standards one message is clear - start building Atom Syndication and Publishing support into new applications now, and consider enabling Atom support for existing and legacy data sources, in order to maximise future Enterprise Mashup capability.

Are you using, or planning to use Enterprise Mashups? Share your thoughts in our comments section.

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed