July 2007: Red Hot Mashups!
Quote of the Month
"SOA Express from StrikeIron is one of those mashups tools that is the
exception that proves the rule...unmistakably the mashup model of ad hoc
integration of data and functionality and it shows how our older user-controlled
data integration platforms might have life in them yet and move successfully
into the mashup era."
- Dion Hinchcliffe: Leveraging the convergence of IT
A Bumper Crop of New Mashup Platforms
Note from the President
What's New at StrikeIron?
What Can StrikeIron Do For You?
StrikeIron in the News
Note from the President: StrikeIron and Mashups are "Red Hot"
Mashups have received a considerable amount of airplay throughout the entire year, but the movement now seems to be picking up more steam than ever. We recently had our second mashup contest of the year hosted with IBM and saw some really innovative entries, including the winner from Apatar which integrated our Global SMS Web service with their own technology utilizing IBM's QEDWiki mashup platform to create a valuable Salesforce.com customer mobile communication solution.
Several other mashup contests have been announced by other companies, and there are all sorts of new mashup offerings rolling off the production lines such as Tibco's new enterprise opensource AJAX platform, Microsoft's Popfly, Google's Mashup Editor, Yahoo Pipes, and countless others.
So why are these mashups increasing in popularity and why the momentum now? Additionally, why are they gaining more and more traction within the enterprise?
A primary reason is an increasing understanding of the benefits that mashups can provide. Leveraging data from both inside and outside of the enterprise in new creative ways by a larger group of people within an organization (including knowledge workers, not just I.T.) enables time, resources, and technology to be leveraged in any way that they can - ideal of course for the bottom line.
Knowledge workers are recognizing that they can now participate in answering their own needs by building customized views into organizational data enhanced with external data and external functionality without having to wait in the IT queue (which in some organizations can be over a year). This provides a supercharged creative movement internally that allows business users to participate in providing their own short-term solutions, many of which can become prototypes for useful and more complete applications for the I.T. organization to distribute enterprise-wide. This in turn eases the I.T. burden, provides significant visibility into which data in the organization is deemed most useful by those within it, and also provides a greater deal of control for the I.T. organization as security at the API level is often easier than at the UI level.
Another equally important driver is the increased access to larger and more diverse sets of data, both internally and externally. Internally, more and more organizations are standing up APIs (with the proper governance of governance of course, sometimes within an SOA and sometimes not) creating a more fertile ground for mashups to occur. In addition, companies like ourselves are making more and more data sources available with less friction and greater accessibility and diversity of data than ever before. These factors and others are helping to form the perfect storm of mashups that is beginning to organize and will become stronger and stronger as time goes on.
Bob Brauer
President and CEO, StrikeIron
What's New at StrikeIron?
StrikeIron delivers business services through the IBM
SOA Business Catalog
Over the next 60 days, we will be adding 100
business services from our Web Service Marketplace to IBM's SOA Business
Catalog. The services have been tested on IBM platforms and are available for immediate download. <IBM>
Mashup Camp Winner Announced
Renat
Khasanshyn, CEO of Apatar, Inc. was the winner of the Mashup Camp Best of
Conference Business Mashup, as well as the StrikeIron Innovative Content Mashup.
The first mashup she created is called "Cold Call Assistant". It was designed to
make cold-calling new prospects from Salesforce.com easier by gathering and
displaying recent news about the company and their competitors, and provides a
list of restaurants near the prospect's location along with a map for
directions. The "Salesforce.com SMS Mashup using StrikeIron SMS Web Service"
provides salesforce.com users an addition channel of communication to reach
their recipient as soon as possible. "When a user has the ability to notify the
recipient via SMS, the odds to get the message across increases significantly".
It's intended for "productivity improvements, enhanced customers service, and
increased conversion ratios." <Winner>
StrikeIron API created for ZEND Framework
The ZEND Framework is to provide a high-quality, open-source framework for
developing web applications and web services. StrikeIron had created an API in
ZEND Framework because of its web consumption capabilities and the momentum it
is experiencing as a platform for developing Web applications. This interface
will make it extremely easy for PHP developers to access multiple StrikeIron
services in a consistent way. <ZEND>
What Can StrikeIron Do For You?
The Tibco Developer Network is running an AJAX mashup
contest
Tibco is running a mashup contest to achieve the world's
largest mashup. They picked a financial services theme for the contest. Tibco
referred its contestants to use StrikeIron data to be utilized in their mashup.
<Tibco>
Integrate StrikeIron's Web services to one of IBM's
WebSphere products
IBM customers can gather real-time business
information by implementing one of StrikeIron's Web Services into a WebSphere
application. Developers can create applications that are useful across multiple
industries including CRM, eCommerce, Finance, Retail, Insurance, and
Manufacturing. <Catalog>
StrikeIron in the News
ZDNet: A bumper crop of new mashup Platforms
ZDNet's Dion Hinchcliffe reviews 17 products currently
available that offer credible mashup assembly capibilities today. <Bumper Crop>
Take away from Mashup University and Mashup Camp
Not all of this work is ad-revenue focused either, companies like StrikeIron are selling data to be used in custom mashups. They are also using attractive pricing so that groups within enterprises or small businesses can buy the data to join with data they have internally. Combine StrikeIron’s services with something like SnapLogic(open Source), OpenKapow, DAMIO and QUEDWiki (from IBM), or Dapper and you can enable non-IT people to start creating interesting applications that answer questions they couldn’t answer otherwise. <Takeaway>