Making the Most out of Mashups

By Courtney Macavinta

The mashup is a cornerstone of Web 2.0 and is now spreading from the consumer market to inside the enterprise. Mashups are customized applications that “mash” together data from several different sources to create an entirely new Web application or widget. A mashup could simply enable a user to see information from several different sources (i.e., a portal) or allow users to cull, modify and connect disparate data sources to present a unified view or report. A more complex type of mashup involves generating an actual business process application. Mashups typically have a Web-interface feel.

“A mashup is a composition of Internet capabilities within a rich collaborative environment,” says Jason Bloomberg, managing partner at the analyst firm Zapthink.

And a new report by Forrester Research projects that the enterprise mashup market will reach nearly $700 million by 2013. Enterprise mashups are set to take shape in two categories: Vendor-created mashups for the enterprise and do-it-yourself internal mashups that can be created by employees. To be sure, mashups enable CIOs to empower their organization's business users and customers. At the same time, with every new offering -- mashup or not -- come security, business process and support issues.

As self-service mashups inside the enterprise emerge, here is what CIOs need to consider:

• Establish a framework Before allowing unfettered do-it-yourself mashups inside the enterprise firewall, Bloomberg advises that CIOs and their division partners establish governance -- putting a framework in place that manages permissions, use of data and confidentiality. Deploying a service-oriented architecture (SOA) is also essential, he says.

“Mashups are becoming the killer app for SOA,” he says. “You have to be able to trust those [mashed up] services out there -- you need a service-oriented architecture so services are reliable and meet the service levels that are contracted.” The bottom line: “Policies need to be in place before you let anyone do the mashups inside the organization,” Bloomberg says.

• Be prepared to support internal and external business users According to another April 2008 report by Forrester, “Enterprise Mashups: Lead, Don’t Follow,” enterprise mashups have the advantage of mashing up data sources and services both inside and outside an enterprise’s firewall.

“The most useful business mashups will be ones that combine data from your internal applications,” writes analyst Mike Gualtieri.

While mashups can empower business users to create their own ad hoc Web applications, the flip side is that CIOs will now have to equip their help desks to support mashups just as they would for any other service or application. Another issue is that employees will rely on internal mashups to get their jobs done.

“For example, a star hedge fund trader may use a mashup for market-timing decisions. The last thing you want to happen is for business-critical mashups to go down,” Gualtieri reports.

So in addition to user support, CIOs have to consider offering production support to ensure that the data sources being pulled to create a mashup are up and running and resilient to outages.

• Expect demand for DIY mashup capabilities Forrester also predicts that enterprise mashup tools will evolve into Web application development tools. For instance, business users who use social networking mashup widgets at home -- such as Facebook applications -- will want to have the power to configure their enterprise mashups to have the same functionality as those other Web widgets they use. However, inside-the-enterprise mashups will likely be more focused on letting employees create custom applications to provide workflow and transactional systems, according to Forrester.

• Mashups could help the bottom line In his May 2008 report, “The Mashup Opportunity,” Forrester analyst G. Oliver Young outlines another value of mashups: more resources for IT.

“The average IT shop today is spending 63 percent or more of its budget on ongoing expenses, leaving precious few dollars for new projects or custom applications,” Young reports. “For IT, a mashup platform will be a scary proposition, but it’s one that can ultimately help the business help itself, increasing IT’s value even while it commits fewer marginal resources.”

Young concludes that mashups could generate more licensing fees for enterprise mashup vendors. “Forrester expects that a fully implemented mashup platform will garner licenses from somewhere between 55 percent and 95 percent of employees,” he says.

Although mashups inside the enterprise are at a relatively nascent stage, Bloomberg says CIOs can get ready now.

“The tools aren't ready for your average business analyst to use -- they are getting there but aren't there yet,” he says. “That is part of the power of Web 2.0 -- that anyone can participate. But it's hard to tell what's ready for enterprise.”

Courtney Macavinta is a business and technology writer based in Silicon Valley. Her articles have appeared in CNET News, Business 2.0, Inc. online, Red Herring, Wired News and The Washington Post. She is also the managing editor of The Online Family.