April 2007: Finding Quality Data
Quote of the Month
“In previous posts, I have talked about the StrikeIron approach, which plays well to the rising phenomenon of the loosely coupled enterprise, which aggregates services on an on-demand basis to meet new business demands. Many, if not all, of such services may be provided from third parties such as the StrikeIron Web Services Marketplace, and consumers of such services are charged on a per-transaction basis.”
– Joe McKendrick in Services Oriented Architecture
Note from the President
What’s New at StrikeIron?
StrikeIron in the News
What’s New in Web Services?
Note from the President: Finding Quality Data
We recently did a survey at an industry event to determine needs of organizations that are integrating or thinking about integrating live data sources via the Web into their applications or Websites. They are primarily doing this to increase access to relevant data sources, eliminate redundant data sources, obtain more accurate and timely data, as well as substantially reduce their data management costs.
We asked on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 being the most challenging) what challenges were being faced when trying to achieve these goals.
The questions were about difficulties in finding relevant data, ease of integrating data, having consistent interfaces across data sources, obtaining quality data sources, and availability of tools for building composite applications and mashups that utilize this data.
The results are in, and we actually found that folks found many challenges with integrating data. The most challenging component is the quality of available data sources that currently exist on the Web. This was closely followed by finding data at all and the ease of integration.
At StrikeIron, we are focusing on each of these challenges and helping our customers to overcome them with our Data-as-a-service approach. This enables easy and consistent access to a large library of different data sources, leaving the above challenges to us rather than our customers, enabling them to focus on their core business.
We are especially focused on working with data provider partners with a reputation for high quality data, as well as our own internal processes to ensure that the data we provide to our customers that they depend on are of the highest possible quality. We understand that one can save all of the money in the world in integration costs, but it doesn't mean anything if high quality data has to be sacrificed in the process.
And as this survey demonstrates, our focus is in the right spot.
Bob Brauer
President and CEO, StrikeIron
What’s New at StrikeIron?
StrikeIron Announces Record First Quarter Growth Led by eCommerce Data Services
Addition of 175 new customers propelled revenue growth six fold over first quarter 2006 figures <growth>.
StrikeIron and Kapow Technologies Partner to Unlock Business Data and Web Services for the Enterprise
Mashing Up Enterprise Applications, the Web, and other Data Sources Just Got Easier <Kapow>
StrikeIron is hiring!
Join our team as StrikeIron continues to lead the industry in Data as a Service. Visit our career page to see our openings in Development, Marketing and Support! <careers>
StrikeIron in the News
InfoWorld Podcast: Web 2.0: Mashups in the Enterprise
InfoWorld’s Eric Knorr interviews the CEOs of Kapow, StrikeIron, and Teqlo explore the emerging business mashup ecosystem.
<podcast>
SD Times: To Define What A Mashup Is
Defining best practices for mashups would be a lot easier if there were a common definition for mashups in the first place. <mashup>
ZDNet: Proof that the SOA as a Service as a SaaS (SaaSaaSaaS) market is thriving
StrikeIron now calls its category as "Data as a Service"…in which it vets, tests, hosts, and delivers individual services, via a Web service marketplace, to consumers over the public Web.
<SaaSaaSaaS>
MashupGuy: Data Services Mashup
If you're looking to build a mashup, you're going to need data. Sometimes this will be your own, other times you'll bring together data from one source and a visualization (such as Virtual Earth) from another.
<Mashup guy>
What’s New in Web Services?
MapQuest Driving Directions
Instantly validate and enhance contact information for any global address. <MapQuest>
New Sample Workbooks for SOA Express added
StrikeIron constantly adds new sample workbooks for SOA Express for Excel to the Developers Support area of our Web site. See some of our latest samples for Address Verification, Global Addrses Verification and ZIP Code Info:
<workbooks>