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Mash-ups: not small potatoes |
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Friday, 06 June 2008 |
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Big Blue democratises creation of re-mix enterprise Web application…
IBM is opening up its
IBM
Mashup
Center
as a free trial on the Web, allowing non-technical business people to experiment and build customised, mixed content mash-ups. On schedule for mid-year delivery, the IBM Mashup Center will allow users to create situational applications by re-mixing information from anywhere to gain business insight and, hopefully, do their jobs smarter and more effectively.
In the coming weeks, IBM will offer customers the opportunity to experiment with
IBM
Mashup
Center
and gain hands on experience for free through IBM Lotus Greenhouse. Lotus Greenhouse is a Web site where anyone can register and try out
IBM
Mashup
Center
, and other collaborative products, such as IBM Lotus Connections, Lotus Quickr, Lotus Sametime and WebSphere Portal.
IBM
Mashup
Center
will be hosted on Greenhouse, giving customers a secure environment to try the technology and evaluate mash-up potential without installing anything in their own environment. The hosted version of
IBM
Mashup
Center
will include widgets from IBM, and a growing network of IBM Mashup Center Business Partners, such StrikeIron and Kapow Technologies.
“
Enterprise
mash-ups are emerging as one of the most important opportunities companies will seize over the next few years,” judges Bob Brauer, president and founder, StrikeIron.
“A massive number of people have the skills to assemble widgets into very useful business applications but do not have the time or desire to become programmers,” argues Larry Bowden, vice president, Portals and Mashups, IBM Software Group. “IBM Mashup Center is designed for the majority of business users to create situational applications immediately to fill a need - iterate and innovate as they desire, share mash-ups with others and be empowered, all while letting IT managers sleep at night, knowing the technology is secure and managed at the enterprise level.”
Also convinced that mash-ups are now anything but small potatoes is research and advisory firm Gartner, Inc. In the ‘Gartner Emerging Trends and Technologies Roadshow’ that took place in late May and early June, the company included mash-ups as one of the ten most disruptive technologies that it estimated would shape the IT landscape over the next five years.
By 2010, Gartner predicts that Web mash-ups will be the dominant model (80%) for the creation of new enterprise applications. “Because mash-ups can be created quickly and easily, they create possibilities for a new class of short-term or disposable applications that would not normally attract development dollars,” says Gartner Fellow David Cearley. “The ability to combine information into a common dashboard or visualise it using geo-location or mapping software is extremely powerful.”
John Williamson |
