open models of communication, information, and even the creation of products and services, have emerged as a proven and highly effective way to directly drive business activity in entirely new and powerful ways. It’s largely thanks to things like open standards, open source, and open content link »
Enterprise 2.0 is just one good example of the emerging intersection of many of these open trends combining open collaboration where anyone can collaborate with globally visible information sharing. It’s also one of the most immediately appealing models to most businesses since it doesn’t necessarily entail many of the risks and challenges that more external modes of open engagement would require. In other words, businesses today are generally comfortable with achieving objectives with the assistance of 3rd parties in an outsourcing or partnership model, but they are generally not as comfortable with using open sourcing or crowdsourcing to achieve the same objectives. link »
Social networks link »
Network effects link »
Push vs. Pull (DIY) link »
Business Blogging link »
Product Development 2.0 link »
Customer Communities link »
Architectures of Participation link »
Mashable Products link »
Open APIs and Feeds link »
Ajax/Flash/Silverlight link »
Lightweight Platforms link »
On-Demand Scaling link »
Shadow Apps link »
Office 2.0 link »
Mobile link »
It’s presently not easy task to create a roadmap for businesses to create an orderly transition to Web 2.0 models. For one, the pace of change and innovation on the Web today is daunting, making roadmaps age and become obsolete almost as soon as they are complete. The second is that many aspects of Web 2.0 approaches are fundamentally disruptive and will require businesses to do serious soul searching and often take on real risk to the brands, reputations, and many a product line’s long-term future. link »
Web 2.0 in the enterprise: Strategic or tactical? link »
Most organizations will be focusing on tactical experiments and pilot efforts as they begin to dabble with Web 2.0 and see how they can apply it to their local corporate culture and unique business situations. But whether one is looking at completely transforming a business at a strategic level, or just applying a few Web 2.0 techniques to a corner of a business that can benefit from it, the message is clearer and clearer business leaders: Significant change is afoot and now is the time to start looking hard at how to embrace it. link »
for many business and IT leaders it can be a significant challenge to keep a current and up-to-date understanding of Web 2.0 and how it applies to the enterprise. What sort of changes to the fabric of the organization is required? What kind of technologies and platforms should be created? How should online products be tweaked or transformed to deliver more value to customers and get even more back? To help answer this, I created an up-to-date Web 2.0 in the enterprise visualization (above) that is my take on the major elements of Web 2.0 and how it applies to the two great aspects of Web 2.0; the social and the technical. link »
Wikis link »
Collaboration 2.0 link »
Emergent structure link »
Expertise Location link »
Collective Intelligence including Prediction Markets link »
Ad Hoc Social IT link »
Employee Blogs link »
Data aggregation link »
Enteprise mashups link »
Perpetual Beta link »
Syndication link »
SOA + WOA link »
S aaS link »
Some Challenges in Applying Web 2.0 in the Enterprise 1) Development Challenges All of this needs close ties to manageability The big design tension: Fast and easy vs. well designed and well engineered Lack of standard development methods with Web 2.0: Need proven tools and enterprise design patterns We now have tools built to bring applications together very quickly, in contrast with traditional development platforms And if you build them this way, how can you make them scale to million of customers? Lots of existing platforms with different tools, how to preserve an organization's huge investment in current skills and technologies? 2) Business Value Is there broad business value in social networking? How to do this dealing with a lot of private customer data? It's not likely you'll want to bring people together to share customer data Not entirely clear yet how to apply social networking profitably to business models link »
these increasingly portable visual parts are now becoming quite commonplace, easy to consume by regular Web users, and are becoming richer and more useful all the time. In fact, the spread of widgets, and badges — also called gadgets by the big Web players like Microsoft and Google — has been very clear in the last year and there are now hundreds of them readily available to use after a minute or two of configuration. link »
IBM has put together an open approach for making user data secure inside of Web mashups , known as SMash link »
Efforts in this area include range from Google’s OpenSocial initiative to the push for adoption of DataPortability.org’ s and OpenFriendFormat ’s support which are all improving the world of data safety, security, and mobility in the mashup world as well. link »
OpenAjax link »
OpenSAM link »
DataPortability.org link »
Popfly, Microsoft’s newest Web mash-up development too l that the company released in alpha form on May 18, isn’t really like Yahoo Pipes. It’s more like Yahoo Pipes for mere mortals. To see what Popfly looks like, check out this collection of Microsoft Popfly screen shots . link »
business workers still spend a significant amount of time manually integrating together the data in their ever increasing number of business applications. Tools that could let thousands of workers solve their situational software integration problems on the spot themselves, instead of waiting (sometimes forever) for IT to provide a solution, is indeed a potent vision. link »
mashups are just starting to be considered seriously in many organizations link »
1) deep access to existing enterprise services and data/content repositories link »
2) SaaS-style Web-based mashup assembly and use link »
3) assembly models that are truly end-user friendly with very little training required link »
4) a credible management and maintenance story for IT departments that must support a flood of public end-user built and integrated apps, and last but certainly not least link »
5) mashup products that address important questions about mashups and enterprise security link »
Are mashups really a major new development model? link »
The answers to these questions will inevitably shake out as the existing mashups products get applied to real business problems and the industry collectively learns what capabilities and approaches are needed for them to be successful. link »
Seventeen Mashup Platforms link »
Apatar is a mashup product designed to help “users and mashup developers to join their on-premise data sources with the Web and Office 2.0 applications without coding.” link »
BEA’s Aqualogic Pages product is one of the few full-blown end-user mashup tools currently available as a commercial, supported product from a leading software company. link »
Dapper has been around for a little while now and made last year’s list and the product continues to improve. It’s 100% Web-based both for data mashup creation as well as use. link »
Applibase’s DataMashups site is one of the more complete and sophisticated Web-based mashup builders available today. What DataMashups sometimes lacks in visual style it more than provides in substance with some of the most compelling examples of real, usable business mashup that I’ve seen. link »
Extensio is a relatively new entrant in the mashup space and their product takes advantages of the latest developments in Web gadgets and widgets. link »
Microsoft has entered the situational software arena with a fascinating new mashup development tool called Popfly . One of the best looking mashup tools by far, and also one of the most engaging and easy-to-use link »
JackBe’s Presto series of enterprise mashup solutions is one of the most complete and compelling solutions available today for organizations that want to move the excitement and results of the consumer mashup story into their day-to-day business. link »
Kapow is the one of the most venerable — and capable — data mashup platforms on the market. With both an open community known as OpenKapow as well as a powerful desktop-based graphic mashup builder, Kapow has some of the best performing and most stable capabilities in the mashup world. link »
Proto is another interested new mashup development platform that claims to bring “a fresh look and industrial-strength desktop application development to knowledge workers.” link »
IBM’s QEDWiki is one of the most impressive mashup platforms presently available and is the de facto poster child for how the end-user development model of enterprise mashups might look. link »
From the company with the name that looks like a typo but is really a semi-obscure programmer’s reference, \n software’s RSSBus takes the Yahoo! Pipes school thought to building data mashups. link »
While genuine open source mashup solutions are still rare, SnapLogic manages to provide a solution that delivers a community-based data mashup server that can create the inputs needed for visual mashups. link »
SOA Express from StrikeIron is one of those mashups tools that is the exception that proves the rule. link »
Teqlo is a different concept in mashups and one that I’ve been tracking for a while. Based on a kind of Web 3.0 concept,Teqlo provides a mashup development service that can largely let an application build itself. link »
One of the highest profile mashup tools available today, Yahoo! Pipes is primarily a data mashup, not a user interface mashup tool. link »
WSO2 Mashup Server is yet another data mashup service that provides the a bility to compose and recompose services into forms that are more consumable. Specifically, the Mashup Server says it can provide “human-consumable results through a variety of user interfaces including Web pages, portals, e-mail, Instant Messenger service, Short Message Service (SMS), etc.” link »
Google Mashup Editor (GME) link »
a good programmer will take a frequently recurring, monotonous task (like testing) and instead of doing it by hand, will instead write a piece of code once that will do the task for them, thereby automating it for future use. link »
A round-up of eight promising mashup tools link »
Above All Software’s Above All Studio is one of the most interesting software assembly tools I’ve seen so far in the enterprise space. link »
DataMashups.com is a new highly Web-centric mashup tool that I covered recently because of its extreme user friendliness and compelling Apple Hypercard-like development model, complete with a WYSIWYG "edit" mode. link »
JackBe’s JackBuilder product is a browser-based mashup tool with an enterprise bent and is intended to deliver on a vision JackBe calls Rich Enterprise Applications or REAs. link »
Nexaweb’s aRex is an intriguing addition to this list because it’s more of an OpenLaszlo or Flex competitor in the RIA space than a real mashup tool. link »
Procession’s Process Engine and Process Designer is a serious task-oriented enterprise mashup product. link »
RatchetSoft is system integrator and composite application/mashup vendor and their Ratchet-X Studio product is a medium-weight solution to the rapid application integration problem. link »
RSSBus is a brand-new mashup tool that focuses on that ubiquitous Web syndication protocol that just about every modern Web site in the world provides content and notifications through. link »
ProgrammableWeb maintains the best up-to-date API directory of the Internet’s Global SOA currently available (272 APIs as of today) link »
there were at least nine significant announcements in this space, many around the business flavor of this emerging new type of ad hoc Web applications. These are often referred to as enterprise mashups and the growing number of offerings in this space run the gamut from Web widget assembly platforms for end-users to data-only swizzlers and remixing applications created specifically for IT professionals. link »
The habits and expectations of the larger part of a generation of workers who don’t yet realize mashups are poised to change many things about the software landscape on the Web and in the workplace. Generational changes can be difficult for businesses to embrace successfully, and while evidence that mashups are remaking the business world are still very much emerging, they certainly hold the promise. link »
mashups are probably the next major new application development model as well an increasingly popular approach for achieving better ROI with service-oriented architecture (SOA). link »
Read how a number of new mashup standards have appeared recently. link »
Here are some of the larger developments in mashups recently, in alphabetical order by company: link »
DreamFace’s new Mashup Kits are a set of mashup development tools link »
Intel’s Mash Maker is free browser extension that allows users to instantly change Web pages in place and remix them with information from different online sources. link »
JackBe’s new Presto 2.0 platform is almost certainly the most capable and mature enterprise mashup platform currently on the market. link »
Lotus Mashups is a new offering from IBM that builds on the experiences from their well-received experimental QEDWiki mashup tool link »
IBM is offering MashupHub , a lightweight repository of “Web, departmental, personal and enterprise information” for use in business applications and mashups. link »
Mindtouch is primarily known as a wiki company with an aggregation focus, but their new “Itasca” product moves them definitely into the mashup space. link »
Kapow’s OnDemand is a new service from one of the original data mashup pioneers. link »
Serena’s Mashup Exchange highlights an increasingly important feature of mashup platforms link »
SnapLogic’s latest version of their data mashup tool link »
The top 10 challenges facing enterprise mashups in late 2007
link »No commonly accepted assembly model. link »
An immature services landscape. link »
The splintering of widgets. link »
Management and support of end-user mashup apps. link »
Deep support for security and identity. link »
Data quality and accuracy. link »
Version management. link »
Awareness and realization of the potential of mashups by the businesses community. link »
Low levels of support by major software firms. link »
Few killer demo mashups. link »
The convergence of SOA and Web 2.0, two highly interrelated trends that are very focused on 1) connecting people and systems together easily, 2) making software and data available for reuse via services, and 3) building new value upon the foundation of existing information resources and IT assets. link »
Web 2.0's usefulness not so much as a technology, but primarily as adding value to the business. link »
Services, not software. link »
successful services on the Web focused on user-driven adoption, business value on demand, low cost to entry, leveraging of public infrastructure, and probably most important, tight feedback loops between providers and consumers. Shortening and automating key feedback loops are a hallmark of what's happening out on the Web. link »
Community. link »
communities facilitate "getting in touch with a community of people that are your customers or constituents" and the organizations that "get best in touch with their users via contributions, ratings, feedback will be the online businesses that are most successful." link »
Simple. link »
ease-of-use is the single most important aspect of any Web site or program. link »
Feed formats like RSS and Atom allows low-barrier remixing that "builds up an ecosystem that is more vibrant, open, and decentralized." link »
demo the QEDWiki platform to articulate the vision of situational mashup applications, connected bidirectionally via feeds. Dashboards and situational apps can be built in minutes instead of hours, wired together, and even be connected to Internet-based and enterprise IT resources in two directions. link »
The Next Rev of the Web Programming Model (Source: IBM) Rich Internet Applications (Ajax, Flash, etc.) Instant Web apps (minutes instead of hours and days) Lightweight programming models Mashable assets (new — and just as importantly, existing IT resources (Ross Mayfield) made to work in this new situational model) Feeds link »
Harnessing Web 2.0 techniques for business process integration, automation, and management, particularly around highly-repetitive, transactionalprocesses will allow more time for tacit interactions , the high value knowledge work that many workers can’t spend time doing because of the overhead of tedious, low-value transactional work. Tacit interactions are perceived as one of the biggest remaining avenuesfor achieving higher worker productivity. link »
Grand Business Process Visionaries: Rearden Commerce link »
SMB Business Process Visionaries: Bridgewerx link »
BPM 2.0 emphasizes simple, inexpensive tools, true end-user wiring together of business processes, dynamic executable languages like BPEL , and many other Web 2.0 style-techniques, including zero-deployment footprint BPM clients enabled by Ajax. link »
Pure-play mashups already facilitate unguided interactions with a set of underlying services link »
BPM-style mashups merely facilitate guided interactions that enable entire business processes in the same way, on the Web or behind the firewall. link »
what does Web 2.0 bring to the table as far as real business value? It’s this question in particular we’re continuing to circle as we continue looking at Web 2.0 strategies in the enterprise. Read Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 of our exploration of Web 2.0 strategies in the enterprise. link »
I covered BPM strategies for Web 2.0 in my last post and pointed to a few companies that best exhibited the advantages that lightweight, Web-based, self-service BPM can provide. link »
You may recall that one of the key concepts of Web 2.0 ( diagram ) is The Long Tail, which describes the mass servicing of micromarkets, which is only possible (or at least, cost-effective) in a self-service world. link »
mashup-style BPM tools let users focus on developing solutions that assist users in automating and managing either transactional or tacit interactions. In this way, automating tedious and manual transactions can increase the time spent on tacit interactions. Some experts claim this is approach can provide access to the last bastion of work productivity productivity. But spending that same time focusing on building solutions that support and enable tacit interactions might have even more return on investment. link »
Tacit interactions, however, are generally harder to automate because of their variability and open-endedness. In general, they are largely guided by skilled workers, and it’s this part that Web 2.0 techniques might be able to help address most by getting excessive central control out of their way. I find mashup tools fascinating for just this reason; because they point to a near-term future where most skilled end-users can find or build/tweak just the right solution, just when they need it. link »
Applying Web 2.0 Concepts to BPM Low-barrier, available anywhere, Web-based business process mashups (Ajax and RIAs with granular URL structures) Allow business users to structure business information and content (folksonomies over taxonomies) Continuous, bottom-up management and maintenance of business processes by the end-users that use them Business processes exposed as Web services, turning the business process into a reusable platform Easy inclusion of external Web-friendly data sources and services into business processes Based on portable, recognized standards as much as possible (OpenAjax, RSS, REST, SOAP, BPEL, etc.) Web 2.0-style collaboration (wiki-style editing, blog-style publishing, social networking, etc.) link »
there is so much overlap in technology, technique, and intent that Web 2.0 and SOA has been described as a true coevolution of concepts . link »
" BPM is SOA’s Killer Application ", link »
A Key Point: We need lighter, more process-oriented tools that are guided by users link »
we find that upfront, excessively structured and complex IT systems are often failing businesses by creating overly rigid automation that isn’t user customizable, evolvable, and leaves too much of the result knowledge uncaptured. link »
Enterprise 2.0 is one compelling vision for this and it really is about freeform, collaborative software that adapts to the situation and is controlled primarily by the user, giving workers tools that get out of their way and connect them to their colleagues and their data. link »
Mashups aren't just browser-based integration, but can be server-side too. See my recap of the different mashup styles . link »
However, though mashups are technically easy to create and generate somewhat useful Web applications, it's a technology solution that may currently be ahead of a real business problem to solve. At least on the Web that is. Monetization and building workable business models around mashups is something of a struggle, particularly when many of the API and widgets suppliers are currently unwilling to provide much in the way of Service Level Agreements that would make it possible to safely rely on a supplier. Some content suppliers (notably Yahoo!) even have draconian daily metering restrictions while they figure out if competing sites will sprout up and take way their users by leveraging Yahoo!'s own services. So while mashups are a very interesting technical solution on the Web, there's still some work to do before successful businesses can be build around this model. link »
The motivations for mashups are quite different inside of organizations, where application backlogs and demand for more software that will improve collaboration and productivity are often rampant. If this state of affairs is true, far from having too much software, most enterprises don't have enough to satisfy demand, despite the prevalence of mountains of existing enterprise systems, many of which are underutilized. The arguments for letting users self-service themselves with end-user application tools and getting IT out of the critical path for the backlog of simpler applications are extensive and I won't belabor them long here. link »
IBM's QEDWiki: A Compelling Example of Enterprise Mashup Tooling link »
To see exactly how end-user generated enterprise mashups work, I prepared a screencast that walks through the process of building a so-called "situational application" on-the-fly in a just a few minutes, complete with geolocation and database support. link »
But inside our organizations, both in the IT department and in business units, mashups are a much rarer phenomenon. link »
I'll start with my take on the key aspects of mashups from a value proposition perspective. link »
Effective leverage of Web parts and the Global SOA . Mashups are generally built out of the bits, pieces, and services of other Web applications that already exist, adding code only when it can't be sourced from internal or external suppliers or to provide integration "glue" between the parts. This reuse can quickly and easily leverage millions of dollars in previous investment and results in a "building on the shoulder's of giants" effect. link »
Simple, lightweight software models and services. By focusing on the simplest possible techniques and formats, Web mashups appear to be successful and widespread primarily because just about anyone can and are creating them. link »
mashups are 100% pure Software as a Service (SaaS) and require no installation, updates, plug-ins, admin rights, or anything but a garden variety Web browser and the mashup's URL to run. link »
A focus on self-service and DIY. As I alluded to above, mashup development can be just as much for everyday Web users as it is for professional software developers. Like so many things on the Web that put the power of publishing and participation into everyone's hands, mashups have the potential to give all of us the ability to create real, useful software. link »
This has the potential to further enable the productivity of knowledge workers as well as release The Long Tail of IT demand . It could also reduce the application backlogs that continue to bedevil IT departments and their customers everywhere. link »
Mashup Challenges link »
Deconflicting the two major mashup models. link »
Too many widget formats. link »
Not enough Web services exist in our enterprises or on the Web. link »
Security and identity need to be sorted out. link »
No common creation metaphor. link »
Mashup Opportunities link »
Defining the essential ingredients of a successful mashup ecosystem. link »
Addressing the tension between the two major styles of integration. link »
Providing effective "enterprise context." link »
Distribution and consumption. link »
SEO, analytics, page views are all challenged by the mashup model. link »
At the root of what a mashup is the the question of what’s being "mashed" together into something new. Is it data? Is it visual presentation? Is it the underlying functionality (code)? The answer of course is that a mashup could be all of these things, or just one of them. In the end, mashups are intentionally loosely defined because of their very nature as ad hoc aggregations of whatever needs to be aggregated. Whether that is visuals, information, or working software is immaterial to the term’s application. link »
An increasing number of companies such as Bridgewerx , Kapow , Worcsnet , and others are trying to solve (or partially solve) the problem of requiring programming skills to create mashups. This means mashups will become much more end-user directed in the near future as facilitation techniques become more sophisticated. They will be created by almost anyone for just-in-time situations and projects, and even thrown away when their usefulness ends. link »
Mashups connote a mindset of informal techniques that just work by virtual of the concept of "small pieces, loosely joined". link »
The 5 styles of mashups link »
Presentation Mashup link »
Client-Side Data Mashup link »
Client-Side Software Mashup link »
Server-Side Software Mashup link »
Server-Side Data Mashup link »
we have witnessed the continuation of the steady movement of the mostly consumer-driven Web 2.0 phenomenon into the workplace that began as a trickle in 2006. Blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, social networking, end-user mashups, and even prediction markets saw their largest entry yet into businesses and institutions around the world. link »
The more technical side of Web 2.0 also began to see maturity as businesses started to rethink their service-oriented architectures to be more Web-like and the rich Internet application industry added many major new building blocks and platforms that push the envelope in terms of the kinds of interactive experiences the Web is able to deliver. link »
We also began to see Enterprise 2.0 make real penetration in business as well as social networking finally get some corporate respect and validation as a functional business tool that can bring tangible benefits to the workplace. link »
Here is my take on what I think the most significant Enterprise Web 2.0 stories were in 2007: link »
The foundations for a real Global SOA were finally laid. link »
Social networks came of age for business. link »
The major software firms began to offer Web 2.0 solutions for businesses. link »
User/business-controlled Web identity began to take hold. link »
The Web-based user experience prepared to take a major leap forward. link »
End-user mashups platforms laid the essential groundwork for early adoption next year. link »
Widgets, gadgets, and roaming desktops on the Web showed enterprises how portals should really work as well as be disintermediated. link »
Enterprise 2.0 became a reality in 2007. link »
Mobile Web applications for business became nearly ubiquitous. link »
A number of key strategic Web platform plays were begun in 2007 that will affect enterprises. link »
