Some Things You Might Ask Me (About Enterprise Mashups)

I know a good idea when I see one. Recently I was inspired by a blog post from esteemed Web 2.0 big-thinker Andrew McAfee. In ‘Some Questions you Might Get Asked’ he compiled a list of commonly-asked questions when discussing Enterprise 2.0.

So I polled my executive team and a few of our partners. With a nod to Mr. McAfee, here's the most commonly asked questions JackBe encounters when we're discussing mashups with prospective mashup adopters.

In no particular order:

1. What are the most typical uses of mashups in organizations in my industry?


2. Who has implemented mashups already? What kind of results did they see?


3. Who typically creates mashups? Developers, power users, end users, or some combination of these?


4. How are mashups shared and consumed? Where can they be 'published'?


5. What is the difference between an enterprise mashup and a consumer mashup?


6. How do mashups interact/leverage my security and governance tools (LDAP, Single Sign-on, SOA registry/repository, etc.)?


7. How are mashups different from my BI and BPM solution?


8. How are mashups different from an ESB?


9. Do I have to be finished with my SOA to implement mashups?


10. What infrastructure software do mashups run on (what app server, what databases, etc.)?

A recent Forrester survey highlights that 41% of IT decision-makers polled had never heard of mashups. So if you run across one of us JackBeans at a conference, please remember this: the only bad question is the one you don't ask us.