The Enterprise Web 2.0 Blog

We're a bit behind on our blogs. But let me tell you what I told my boss earlier this week: we have a huge list of excuses. Most importantly, we've been busy launching Presto 2.0, the next generation of our award-winning enterprise mashup platform. It includes a huge set of new capabilities but a few are notable innovations: Mashlets, user-created badge-like interfaces to mashups, and our Excel Connector, a lightweight Excel plug-in to publish/consume mashups to/from spreadsheets. Both are very user-centric solutions that bring mashups right into the spreadsheets, portals and blogs that business folk use daily.

And to compliment our Presto 2.0 announcement we rolled out our new Mashup Readiness Test, announced our Spring Mashup Webcast Series, published a column and a chalk-talk video, exhibited at O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Expo, and launched a brand new edition of our website to wrap it all up in a nice package. (Whew!) But JackBe's activity last week was only part of a much larger movement. What's most interesting was the hyper focus Web 2.0 technologies, particularly mashups, received from the analysts, press and conference-goers last week. I think what we're seeing is the beginning of a perfect storm, one with enterprise mashups at the center.

I have always been intrigued by trends and patterns. Here's a few I see, some obvious, some perhaps not. On the technology side, we [finally] have acceptance of RIA technologies such as Ajax, Flash/Flex and Silverlight as a browser-based presentation technology. SOA, and services in general, are gaining momentum as outside-the-firewall business data providers. And perhaps in part to JackBe and our peers, mashups and widgets have become very popular topics in enterprise circles. (Just take a peek at these to see what I mean: InfoWorld, eWeek, ComputerWorld, PC World, Forrester, VentureBeat, and even more from InfoWorld.)

On the business side, we're beginning to see acceptance of 'iSaaS' solutions (my term), that look and feel like SaaS offerings but are provisioned by the IT department but run by the business folks. Equally important, executive teams are beginning to see the Web 2.0 light, in some cases by choice and in some by force. (I have a great story about the head-fake Web 2.0 technologies can give an executive team but I'll save it for another post.) And these are business trends supported by my time on the floor at the Web 2.0 Expo. The 10,000 attendees at the Web 2.0 Expo weren't all Facebook developers, I assure you. The event was packed with architects wanting to learn how Web 2.0 technologies can solve their business problems.

And that's the storm I see brewing: technology and business beginning to align for some true synergy. As I see it, the three trends that are driving this perfect storm are:

1. Enterprise data is becoming more and more accessible via services.
2. More and more decisions are made based on internal and external data.
3. Users are getting technology savvy to solve problems themselves.

Now take these three enterprise trends and trow in mashup technology as a catalyst. Here's the explosive results:

1. Enterprise Mashups combine data from internal and external web services,
2. Enterprise Mashups let end-users do the creating and sharing,
3. Enterprise Mashups expose data into the common user tools like portals and spreadsheets.

The real message here is the user-facing nature of this trend. This is a swing away from our 20-year love affair with monolithic systems. Don't get me wrong, IT has done a great job of automation of many automatable tasks but monoliths do nothing for users trying to address their Long Tail information needs. The coming storm will fix that. It is a storm of RIA, SOA, widgets, iSaaS, and self-service, one that will include the business folks and the IT folks, and one with a healthy dose of enterprise mashups. It is a storm every enterprise should be eagerly anticipating.

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Yesterday I presented for the second year in a row at the CSC Leading Edge Forum.
This year's theme was "Mean, Lean and Green" and I presented JackBe's vision of a leaner IT future: dynamic data integration, syndicated mashups, mashup-based Enterprise Widgets, and improving the adoption and reusability of SOA assets via Mashup-based solutions.

In addition to my presentation, I had the chance to hear and meet some really interesting folks, including Chris Clark, technical lead on the National Environmental Information eXchange Network, and Tomas Soderstrom, IT Chief Technology Officer for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Both are overseeing projects that sound like potential candidates for Enterprise Mashups and Mashup-based Widgets!

I genuinely enjoyed meeting them and the many other speakers and attendees at this informative conference. Many thanks to CSC for giving me the opportunity to be in such esteemed company.

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It has been almost a year since IBM’s Mashup Eco-System Summit and we noted at the time that there was some confusion among the attendees as to what truly defined an enterprise mashup. Since then we’ve defined the 5Cs of Enterprise Mashups and, more recently, outlined practical examples like the 7 Mashups Every Company Needs. But there’s one thing we’ve always been certain about: no single vendor can address the entire enterprise mashup problem alone. It is critical to catalyze mashups in the enterprise with an ecosystem that surrounds those mashups, making them easier and more secure.

So I’m happy to write that today JackBe announced our Presto Mashup Ready (PMR) program, an ecosystem of partners that provide real value-adding integrations and services to the enterprise mashup consumer. We took a rigorous and systematic look at the actors that can influence the success (or failure) of mashups in the enterprise. The result is that we have an amazing group of inaugural partners that are all working to bring enterprise mashups to the proverbial next level --- a level which, in my opinion, will help make enterprise mashups even easier and more secure.

I could write an entire blog about each partner but I expect in all cases you will recognize and appreciate the value these industry leaders bring to a mashup ecosystem. First and foremost are the Mashup Enablers, Xignite and StrikeIron, that provide business data as reliable SaaS-type services. If you need data from public websites, Dapper provides webclipping to fill the “web page to data” gap needed for many enterprise mashups.

But there's even more to the 'mashup enablement' part of this story and you’ll see other Enablers that might be a surprise. You may not think of a database as a SOA-style service, but JackBe’s 2007 Mashup Market Survey showed that 78% of mashup initiatives had databases as an important data source, far exceeding the other types: RSS, REST, and WSDL/SOAP. So EnterpriseDB, and it’s ability to run on Amazon’s Elastic Cloud, make it a perfect mashup fit (more on EDB, EC2 and JackBe later this year, wink wink). And in case you thought webservices were just for the servers, OpenSpan’s technology lets you expose your desktop applications as webservices, which in mashup-speak means it’s a mashable service.

Beyond enablement, everyone agrees that security and governance are must-haves for mashups in the enterprise. For Mashup Governance we’ve turned to Layer7 for their service access security and HP SOA Systinet for their SOA governance. And we recognize that mashups are not always an end unto themselves. Sure we can deliver ‘mashlets’ (aka mashup widgets), but sometimes the mashup is part of a bigger puzzle. Our Mashup Interface (aka Rich Internet Application) partners, Ext JS and Backbase, can provide a face to mashups that really brings them to life.

Finally, it makes prudent sense to bring in the architect professionals who really understand the sophisticated nature of the enterprise. We’re proud to have Mashup Integrator Partner as part of the PMR Program: Capgemini, NuWave Solutions and MomentumSI. Capgemini brings in a wealth of knowledge in providing customers with business and technology strategy. NuWave Solutions is a well-respected BEA Portal Solution provider and MomentumSI is the SOA expert who knows how to architect SOAs and their enterprise mashup cousins.

I hope you are as excited about the Presto Mashup Ready Program as we are. As far as I know this is the first enterprise mashup partner program in the industry and its a milestone we are proud to be a part of. If you’d like to hear from the partners themselves we have some great quotes from our partners on our website. And I’d encourage those interested in becoming a PMR Partner to apply online.

It does take a village to raise an enterprise mashup. We’re proud to be the first mayor.

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