When Mashing Your Enterprise, It Pays To Have a Lot of Friends
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.
