Happy Mashup Holidays
It wouldn't be the holidays without retrospection and resolutions. Looking back, 2007 could reasonably be named Year of the User. Web 2.0 was everywhere. And mashups were a big part of the story. What was a consumer-based technology a year ago is now earning its enterprise chops. In less than a year mashups have gone from a niche, emergent concept to the very top of the Gartner hype cycle. As for JackBe, we are very proud of the contributions we made to mashup industry in 2007, like our C5 Enterprise Mashup Framework, our Enterprise Mashup Markup Language, our Mashup API, and our WSRP-compliant ‘Mashlets’.
To help wrap 2007 up in a nice, shiny package, here’s a compilation of our favorite blogs, articles, books and columns about mashups in the enterprise.
1. Wall Street Journal, ‘Mashups’ Sew Data Together. A business-focused article that brings mashups back to reality with a few good examples of mashups in action. It’s a shame we didn’t get a mention.
2. Dion Hinchcliffe, The top10 challenges facing enterprise mashups. Always a solid voice of reason, Dion tempers the mashup hype with real, practical issues to consider.
3. Gartner, 'Mashups' and Their Relevance to the Enterprise. As usual with Gartner, here's a hype-free summary of ‘what and why’ of enterprise mashups.
4. Gartner (again), Reference Architecture for Enterprise 'Mashups’. A good, practical compliment to their ‘Relevance’ note. We’re very proud to say JackBe’s Presto maps to this architecture quite well.
5. JackBe, Mashups: Moving SOA Out of the Back Office. Moving past the glad-handing, we outlined some real connection patterns between SOA and mashups. (Yeah, we liked our own work.)
6. BusinessWeek, When Companies Do the Mash. Great real-world examples, even if a few of them ain’t exactly mashing.
7. Mulholland, Thomas & Kurchina, Mashup Corporations: The End of Business as Usual. ‘A hypothetical company that achieves a transformation based on SOA.’ A good story that connects technology with organizational evolution.
8. SD Times, To Define What a Mashup Is. An article ahead of its time; worth re-reading just to see what a difference 8 months can make in a fast-moving industry.
9. eWeek, 10 Things You Should Know About Enterprise Mashups. JackBe may not agree with all 10 points, but eWeek does create a simple set of issues to consider when ya start noodling on mashups.
I think you’d agree that most of these move past the ‘hype’ into practical rules, techniques, and examples that can really enhance an enterprise mashup effort.
Looking back and looking forward are traditional activities this time of year. But the holidays are also about giving. And while we’d love to give each and every one of you a gift, we going to start with just a couple of people and a couple of iPods. Of the hundreds of respondents to JackBe’s Mashup Survey, we are pleased to announce that Kevin Sommer and Herman Steinroetter will get a nice shiny iPod under their nondenominational holiday tree/wreath/menorah. Congrats to both of them. The rest of you will just have to be satisfied with that Wii raincheck.
And what about 2008? JackBe has one simple resolution: more enterprise mashup innovations. It should be a very exciting year. Happy holidays!
