Free Enterprise Mashup Software by the Developer, for the Developer

We've spent the last couple years at JackBe designing and building our enterprise mashup product from the ground up.  We’ve won some nice awards, introduced some genuine innovations (like our Enterprise Mashup markup Language, which just passed it's 1-year anniversary) and, most importantly, been blessed with some great customers. 

And now we’ve taken our 2+ years of hard work and made it available for free as the Presto Developer Edition and our Mashup Developer Community (which we lovingly refer to as 'the MDC').  We want all of you to take Presto for a spin and let us know your thoughts.

One notable developer who has given Presto a try is Steve Graham, Senior Technologist in the Office of the CTO at EMC.  He’s created an intriguing mashup that tackles some common issues in the datacenter.  And I think Steve’s perspective is representative of many long-tail business problems outside the datacenter as well. 

 

In his screencast of an enterprise mashup that supports IT/Data Center resource management, Steve points out that many problems in the data center require the synthesis of both modeled and non-modeled information.  Additionally, Steve discusses how these sorts of mashups require a server-centric approach to support the joining of disparate information sources with the desired level of security and performance.

 

I certainly agree with Steve’s technical assessment.  But he also underscores a broader point: organizations that have many systems will need solutions that can bring them together.  JackBe is happy that our new Presto Developer Edition provides an answer...and it's free!!!

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Mashup Recycling: Now this is Green IT!

Sometimes ideas come from the most unlikely of places. Yesterday I got off an elevator and wondered if it was one of the energy-saving models that regenerates power. They ‘give back’, in a sense, making the next round trip less costly than the previous one. An instant later I found myself noodling this very same principle in the world of mashups.

Mashups can be used to build new mashups. They make the next mashup easier to create. It this is the very quality that gives mashups the majority of their ROI and separates 'once-and-done' custom mashups from long-term systematic mashup solutions that achieve a kind of fission via a community of mashers. And in my considered opinion, mashup reuse is one of the most important yet under-utilized qualities of mashups. I think mashup reuse needs it’s day in the sun.

Enterprise mashups can be built on raw data sources (SQL databases, for example) and more formal services (like REST and WSDL). But mashups can also be built upon other mashups, assuming your mashup tool lets you publish the mashup with some sort of callable service interface. So more mashups mean more raw materials to go into the next mashup, creating a kind of network effort. You’d think this might be a no-brainer but I frequently see mashup implementations that that have no reuse at all.

Most mashup vendors show a mashup lifecyle as a circle; the last arrow that closes the circle is the 'reuse'. But this kind of network effect does not happen automatically. Much like the best SOAs, mashup reuse requires some kind of infrastructure to encourage reuse, such as a mashup hub/repository/registry.

Much like the worst SOAs, it is easy to forget about reuse and end up with a bunch of point solutions that stand alone (and miss a lot of the real ROI value of the technology). I see lots of cool mashups that are custom-coded in Java or Javascript. Most of these essentially become a 'mashup silo', with no option for reuse of that mashup's service in the next mashup, particularly for mashers makers other than the original creator.

But technology alone doesn't equal mashup reuse. A second common stumbling block is a social one. You need to change mashup making behavior. Sure, most enterprises have a common organizational mission but that doesn't imply that these same organizations motivate their employees to explicitly think in 'reuse' terms. There’s no magic bullet in any software package that will do that. Mashup reuse takes knowledgeable, committed leadership that can take independent-minded people and make them into a community of mashup makers that look for reusable mashup inputs and strive to create reusable mashup outputs.

Much like real recycling efforts, you need a pro-active, systematic, persistent ecosystem-wide commitment for real mashup reuse. Keep it green, baby.

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McKinsey Recommends Mashups for Managing in a Downturn...Sorta

Like many other business managers, the current economic downturn has me wondering about how my strategy should change to meet new market realities. Because of this I have been reviewing different business periodicals and articles looking for advice. One of the best sources of managerial advice out there is The McKinsey Quarterly. For those who have not heard of McKinsey and co., Wikipedia describes them as  “…widely recognized as a leader and one of the most prestigious firms in the management consulting industry. …”. The goal of their Quarterly is stated as “…to help business people run their organizations more productively, more competitively, and more creatively.”

The people at McKinsey have published a lot of great advice over the years, and understand that many managers are currently looking for reading material about best practices and use of technology during the downturn. They have created a section in their Quarterly titled “Managing in a Downturn” where their most recent article is a great piece that promotes the intelligent use of existing IT assets to create new revenue.

Is one of the most revered business consulting firms referring to the use of Mashups as a way for companies to get themselves in a better competitive position in this economic downturn?

The team who wrote the article mention that an easy to-do is to use and combine existing data assets to gain new insight and business opportunities:

Few companies have successfully capitalized on the explosion of data in recent years. Often this information, residing in separate IT systems or spread across different business units, have never been mined for insights that could add value. Small teams of business and IT staffers can find opportunities by combining a detailed understanding of business processes with straightforward analyses of consolidated data sets……”

Achieving what McKinsey proposes can be a very long and arduous process using old-style integration technologies or for those companies interested in getting results quickly, Mashups are the perfect solution to easily and quickly combine all sorts of data.

The article goes on to mention an example of how a Telecommunications company improved revenue by

“…building high-value but inexpensive links between multiple silos of information. Contracts DB, sales funnels, compensations systems, CRM data warehouses, and other siloed systems… it facilitated analyses that uncovered opportunities to improve revenues…”

Wow! We are also seeing this type of use-case but not only in Telcos. Healthcare and Government arenas are having great results in providing better data by cross-analyzing many distinct data sources.

I know some of you must be thinking “he sees Mashups everywhere” (I do after all work for the leading Enterprise Mashup vendor) but you may only be partially correct in that statement. McKinsey may not be using the term but they are certainly talking about the value proposition of enterprise mashups.

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Mashups for the People. You Betcha!

I laughed when I heard Sarah Palin say in last week's debate: “...and I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also” (this is straight from the CNN transcript). I laughed because it’s such overt “spin” to say you’re not going to answer what the moderator wants to hear. And, incidentally, it's exactly what the moderator wants to hear.

But that’s beside the point. The point is that new technology companies are often put in a similar position of defending their new technology as a challenger to existing, established technology. This is certainly true in the enterprise mashup space. Since mashup adopters have started to graduate from “what-is-it-for” to “ahhh, here-is-how-I-can-use-it", we regularly have to compare and contrast mashups against existing technologies.

I think the defining "AHA!" moment is when people realize that mashups aren’t meant to integrate systems together like EAI/ESB software systems do. But rather that mashups are meant to integrate people to the data in their systems. And as an added benefit mashups are designed for collaboration and sharing among people.

So, now when we hear; “Oh, so mashups aren’t like my ESB or EAI systems that integrate systems; mashups get data from these systems to my people”, we give silent thanks to Sarah Palin, smile, wink, and simply respond with “You Betcha!”.

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