Information Week just published a piece on Mashups. They picked a really in-your-face title for this cover story, labeling it "Half-Baked or Mashed: Is Mixing Enterprise IT And The Internet A Recipe For Disaster?" I guess in the world of tech reporting you need to use a little fear to get people to pick your journal out of the stack. It sure made me stop and read it. After all, maybe I’ve been encouraging folks to cook up a massive disaster! Oh no!
So, I read it, and, although I have issues with a few minor parts of the article, overall it didn’t paint the gloom and doom scenario that the title pointed out. In fact, it raises some good points (or I guess I should say, it rehashes some good points). For example, the article points out that "Staffers who embrace mashup sites and tools represent a rich, untapped source of business innovation." I really believe this, and I think all enterprise CTOs need to pursue more mashup solutions to help tap into this resource of human potential.
Some other key points/advice in the article include the following tips for getting ready for a mashup deployment:
GET READY
Before opening the door to mashup technologies, you need to make several important decisions, over and above the question of who’ll develop applications.IT needs to determine which data sources will be approved for mashing. Public Web sites and APIs like Google Maps are obvious picks, but the real value in an enterprise could come from combining these with intranet and extranet Web services. Next, where will the mashing up happen? Though mashups are associated with browser-based applications, enterprises with SOAs have the option of server-based tools or desktop-centric integration software. If you go with browser-based mashups, decide whether to host the new applications on an existing Web server, buy one of the new dedicated mashup platforms, or farm out the whole shebang. Finally, there are a huge number of development platforms and tools, many of them free. Ajax’s widespread browser compatibility makes it the obvious choice for most Internet apps, but this isn’t an issue for intranet developers who can control their client’s platform.
It is hard to argue with those points, but I would add the editorial that I have never seen a free tool that will help with this. I’ve seen lots of free tools that can help with pieces of this, but real mashups in enterprises require some very elegant activities to occur in the server room and the free tools that are out there only handle little slices of what needs to be done.
I also want to mention that a successful mashup activity, like most other enterprise IT pursuits, should begin with a vision for what needs to be accomplished. Without a vision then the odds of success will be much lower.
