When Looking for Answers...Follow the Money

"Follow the money" is a common way experts rationalize human behaviors in economics, politics, crime and many other areas. This undeniable truth becomes even more relevant in an economic environment characterized by gloom and pessimism, such as the one we are currently experiencing.

It is with this in mind that we are proud to announce that in the midst of one of the most difficult economic scenarios in history, JackBe received $5 Million in additional funding from its existing investors to expand our sales and marketing efforts.

I have been asked by many people “how did you manage this in today’s economic environment?” Well, let's follow the money to figure out the reasons why…

The first clue in the money trail is based on the great promise Mashups have for making business cheaper and faster. With budgets tighter than ever, many organizations are turning to Mashups as a way to do more while spending less. Anthony Bradley at Gartner stated it very well in a recent blog post:

“…mashups may be one of the areas of innovation that continues to do well through the economic downturn. This makes sense as organizations looking to save dollars may look to mashups for a quicker and cheaper approach to integration and new app development.”

The second clue in the money trail is that JackBe has passed many notable milestones in 2008 as well: a ‘Best Enterprise Mashup Platform’ award, a major product release, a community for Mashup Developers, a free Developer Edition, and what we’d like to think is some industry-advancing thought leadership with some great partners.

However, nothing is more important than having new customers and delivering real benefits to them. Receiving the trust of enterprises who use the software we have created is the most vital clue in the proverbial “money trail”. It certainly confirms that there is much value and promise in what we do.

In my opinion, the money trail points out two notable facts. First, there is some tangible value to Mashup technology in the enterprise. But equally important, our customers are buying our software because of the fundamental shift in general enterprise technology from large-scale, monolithic efforts (ERP, CRM, custom applications and the like) to agile, dynamic projects that allow enterprises to take advantage of their existing infrastructure. And by doing so these organizations save time and money while achieving better operational business results.

I think that noted business author (and Member of the Mashup Tribe) Dan Woods summed it up nicely at a recent Mashup Camp:

"Mashups aren't doing things that are already being done by IT; they're doing things that users wanted but IT never got to. You won't get a new CRM system out of a mashup, but you will get a better CRM system that does things IT didn't have time to develop or know were needed."

As Dan noted in a column in Forbes, Mashups are being used by competitive enterprises to rapidly make improvement on their existing software ecosystems to add business value, without the lengthy and expensive projects of the past.

I think that by following the money trail of both investors and customers you can reach a simple but powerful conclusion: Mashups are good for business and they become even more valuable in a scenario where cost reductions and increased efficiencies are paramount.

You can bet that the trust from our investors, our customer's confidence, and the unique opportunity to make enterprises more efficient are the reasons that we will be working hard in 2009.

Mash on.

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My Predictions for 2009: Nothing

Every year I look forward to ‘the prediction season’.  You know it.  It’s that time of year when every expert, pundit, analyst and chatty blogger on the planet decides we need to hear their thoughts on the past year and what they think will happen in the coming year.

There are tons of examples.  I’ve seen predictions about SOA (David Linthicum in Infoworld and Joe McKendrick in ZDNet), IT spending/activity (CapGemini and ComputerWorld), Content Management (CMS Watch), Business Intelligence (Enterprise Systems Journal and Intelligent Enterprise), and of course Web 2.0 (Fast Company).  Gartner even has a Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2009 where mashups made their list for the second straight year. 

I admit, even JackBe has played the soothsayer.  Our CTO, John Crupi, did a great job at the end of 2007 with his Web 2.0 predictions for 2008.  And I hope he does it again for 2009.  But I’ve decided to embrace my inner slacker.  I’m predicting nothing.  Literally.  Instead, I’m going to crowdsource the problem to my Mashup Tribe (that includes you).  Where do you think mashups will be in 12 months?

Of course I’m not a heartless taskmaster (in spite of what my son may say).  I have some great source material for you.  JackBe has spent the last 12 months talking with thousands of organizations and individuals about their perspective on mashups.  And we’ve collected their responses to one simple question: Describe the business problem(s) enterprise mashups will address for you.

And in true Web 2.0 style, I’ve published over 1000 responses to this question in a nice mashup widget (we call them ‘mashlets’), which you’ll find below. (On the off chance that your browser has problems loading the Mashlet inside this blog, you can access it directly.)

Loading Mashlet - MashupUseCases2008.Mashlet. Please wait...

Put on your thinking cap and take a look.  The widget has a nice filtering option (look for the 'Input' button), so try searching on common enterprise technologies like 'portal’, ‘soa’, and ‘dashboard’.  But keep an open mind as well.  I think you will be surprised at the broad range of responses.  There's even some funny ones in there.

Then give me your thoughts.  Where do you think mashups will be in 12 months?

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Are You a Member of the Tribe?

I just listened to Seth’s Godin new book, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. Seth is an inspiring author/marketer and I find him to be one of the easiest-to-understand individuals about complex business topics today. His grasp and explanation of the complex problems facing organizations have made all of his books best sellers in the business world.

In his new book, Seth explains that Tribes are made-up of people who come together to support each other in endeavors in which they are passionate about.  He says it like this:

"A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea... A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate."  (Page 1 of Tribes)

People who make-up a Tribe do not necessarily belong to the same company, social group nor are they located in the same geographic place.  In fact these individuals are not brought together by a single short-lived recruitment effort.  Instead, they have congregated together over time by pursuing similar and/or complementary interests and creating an informal network to exchange information with each other.  Seth goes on to say that PASSION is the thing that drives people to huddle with and find commonality with others.

In my case I am extremely passionate about Mashups in the Enterprise, like everyone here at JackBe.  How else would you explain our 5+ years of effort and the many challenges we have faced and overcome?  It is this passion that has helped bring us together from different backgrounds, leaving behind different comfortable jobs to jointly pursue the larger task of helping create a new category of enterprise software.

From this somewhat unique vantage point, we have seen and continue to witness the formation of a tribe of mashup supporters.  It is this group of pioneers who started talking about Mashups before they were called “Mashups”.  These people are the ones who found a way to combine information from widespread sources so that the combination means something to the end-user. 

These people are the ones that end up explaining what a mashup is time after time, explaining the differences between a Mashup and Business Intelligence or ESB.  It is this tribe of forward-thinking, innovative visionaries who have created a software category where others said none was necessary.

Seth also talks about using Web 2.0 tools to enable your tribe to communicate.  In our case, we have found that the Mashup Tribe requires a place where they can meet other tribe-members and exchange views on all things Mashup.   JackBe launched a Mashup Developer Community (MDC) a few weeks ago and we’re proud to say it has grown to almost a thousand members with members in dozens of countries including the USA, Brazil, Israel, Netherlands, Italy, France, Korea, Russia, Mexico, and India.  The one thing – the ONLY thing – that is common to all of these people is their passion for Mashups and their desire to see Mashups fulfill the potential they hold.

Like any tribe, ours has its more prominent members.  It is with great pride and pleasure that I can call out and recognize some of the “mashters” (mashup masters) of the Mashup tribe.  They all deserve recognition for their work.  Although I am sure, as Seth says in his book, few of them are in the tribe for the publicity:

Analysts and pundits like Anthony Bradley (Gartner), Oliver Young (Forrester), Dion Hinchcliffe (Web 2.0 strategist), David Linthicum (technology pundit, as he likes to say), Joe McKendrick (ZDNet, among other places), Lorraine Lawson (IT Business Edge), and the guys at Zapthink.

 

Thought leaders and authors like Larry Bowden, Dan Gisolfi, and David Boloker at IBM, Mike Ogrinz (author of the upcoming Mashup Patterns), Chris Thomas (Intel), Dan Woods (Evolved Media), Andy Mulholland (CapGemini and co-author of Mashup Corporations), Niall Cook (author of Enterprise 2.0), and Vince Casarez (Oracle).

 

Early adopters and supporters like Rich Barton (founder of Zillow), Brian Wilson and Tony Lucia at Thomson Reuters, Baltazar Rodríguez (Servicio de Administracion Tributaria), the organizers of Mashup Camp, Bob Gourley, Steve Willett, Bob Ware, and the rest of the Overwatch team at the DIA, Alejandro Vargas (Banamex Accival), Vivek Kundra (CTO of the District of Columbia), every submitter to the Apps for Democracy contest, Tim Hall and Marie-Paule Cellini-Odelier at HP, Abe Elias (Ext JS), Manuel Jasso (Wells Fargo), Mark Scrimshire (BCBS), Sean Kelley (Deutsche Bank), John Musser (Programmable Web), the guys in the CTO Office at EMC, Rigoberto Saenz (BBVA), the sharp-as-a-razor Kelly Shaw, and the organizers of the CSC Leading Edge Forum.

Of course I could never get to them all.  The tribe is just too large to mention everyone.  To the rest of you, and you know who you are, thank you.  It is a tribe I am very proud to be part of.

Finally, I’d like to mention that you can download the Tribes audio book for free here and “The Tribe Casebook” from Seth's blog.  If you are a reader instead of a listener, I’ll gladly send you a copy of Tribes (I have about 20 at my disposal); just send me a quick note at luis.derechin@jackbe.com.  I believe in the premises of the book and in my own tribe so much that I truly want to share them with everyone.

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On Ed Yourdon Presents: Mashups!

I am big fan of Ed Yourdon. So I was delighted to see his presentation on Mashups (here). Discussion on this topic by eminent and experienced gurus like him are heart-warming and encouraging to me, since we at JackBe have been working in the area of Mashups to create a new kind of lite-middleware. I and my colleagues have often written about our work (for instance here and here).

What was not so encouraging to me personally was the fact that Presto, our enterprise mashup platform, did not figure in his presentation. Which got me thinking, no surprise really, there must be a whole lot of people that might not know or heard about us since we are such a small company compared to the likes of Google, Yahoo, IBM and Microsoft (which were featured mentions in his presentation).

So, to those of you who are not familiar with us, I would like to take this opportunity to introduce our company, JackBe and our product Presto, a pure-play enterprise mashup server platform built from the ground up for enterprise mashing!

At the core of Presto is our Enterprise Mashup Markup Language (EMML), which we describe as a domain-specific language (DSL) for mashups. No other product or technology offers such a DSL for mashing, which has been greatly appreciated by our users and customers. Do check it out yourself and let me know what you think.

We also offer Presto to developers in a special no-cost Developer Edition. Mashup Developer Community (MDC) members can download and use Presto for free here (requires registration).

In Ed Yourdon's presentation, he mentions Yahoo! Pipes, MS Popfly, etc.  I have heard some describe Presto as 'Yahoo! Pipes on steroids for the enterprise' since Presto's visual mashup composer (called Wires) allows you to create mashups that consume any kind of service / API including WSDL, REST, RSS, Atom, Databases, Excel spreadsheets and so forth. Pipes only deals with public RSS services as far as I know.

Presto also generates 'Mashlets', which puts a face (UI) in front of each mashup. Mashlets become the embeddable objects that can virally spread within and outside the enterprise (assuming the enteprise security policies allow them to share outside). All of this is done in a secure manner, which is why we are an enterprise mashup solution.

To better understand Presto at a high level, I had previously described the 3 artifacts of mashup process here. I hope this provides you some insight into our technology, and hopefully, you will get to try it when you get a chance. While doing so, if you do need any help, don't be shy to ask on MDC, the whole community is there to help!

Mash On!

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The 5 Most Common Mashup Mistakes

Mashups are a popular topic lately, in both IT and business circles. Gartner recently named them a ‘Top 10 IT Technology for 2009’. But if your organization is thinking about ‘getting mashy’, here are five common pitfalls that you can avoid with just a little education and forethought:

• The ‘Fall for the Buzz’ Mistake: Misunderstanding what a ‘mashup’ is. Everyone wants to be associated with the hot buzzword and mashups are hot. Unfortunately, ‘mashup’ is a term that has also been used by vendors in areas like business process management, enterprise service bus (ESB), business intelligence (BI), and portals. So focus on the goal: mashups let you address just-in-time information needs by consuming and combining bite-size chunks of data, they run in ‘Internet time’ (i.e. seconds), they are usually relatively code-free, and they must make it easy to share with others. And there are, of course, a number of good independent software vendors that specialize in mashups.

• The Self-Serve Mistake: Every few years we hear about tools that will turn users into developers. It ain’t true. Yes, users are becoming more technically savvy and self sufficient every day (we call them ‘Business User 2.0’). But we’ll need IT for a long time to come, acting it’s new role as ‘enabler’. In the case of mashups, IT will establish a secure, reliable, and robust mashup infrastructure through which end-users can get mashing. In non-technical terms, IT builds the mashup lab and the business gets to play mashup mad scientist without worrying about blowing up the building.


• The SOA Mistake: Assuming you need an SOA before you adopt mashups. Sure, mashups put a business face on SOA, so to speak. And it’s easier for you to create mashups if there are a lot of ‘mashable’ (i.e. SOA-based) data sources. But the best mashup software can instantly turn databases and applications into mashable services.  So don’t wait for that 5-year SOA effort to be finished before you start the mashup rollout. Use mashups to help you define the optimal SOA.

• The Silo Mistake: Mashups that aren’t reusable fall into the same ‘silo’ trap as legacy software. Mashups are their best when a community of like-minded users are building upon each other’s work. As we’ve written in the past, this kind of network effect does not happen automatically. Your mashup solution must have some kind of infrastructure to encourage reuse, such as a mashup ‘hub’, also often referred to as a ‘repository’ or ‘registry’. You (and your mashup software) have gotta have one.

• The ”Oops” Mistake: Thinking about security as an afterthought. Mashups can be based on business-critical data from your ERP system, your SFA system, your CRM system, etc. And, once created, they are often sent to many destinations (think portals, iPhone, and spreadsheets). You don’t want to find out your data has been compromised just because you assumed some kind of security was in place, do you? Your mashup solution must let mashup creators choose who they share with and the permissions. And the entire continuum of mashup inputs to mashup destinations need to be incorporated into your mashup plan. In technical terms, you need mashups that include LDAP integration and single sign-on support so they play nicely in your secure enterprise.
  

Understanding these common pitfalls can help your first (and your 50th!) mashup efforts be successful. Ignoring them will likely lead to mashup misery. Now get mashing.

[Reposted from Fast Company.]

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