ReadWriteEnterprise: IBM Makes Another Commitment To Mashups

Alex Williams posted at ReadWriteEnterprise today on IBM’s latest mash-up offering, the Mash-up Center, which provides connections with web services including Cognos BI through the Cognos 8 Mash-up Service, and allows users to create mash-ups by dragging and dropping Google Gadgets into the Mash-up Center.

There is nothing new under the sun. IBM has been dabbling with mash-up technology for several years now. I had seen the previous incarnations demo’d at IOD (going back to 2006 and 2007) and the Enterprise 2.0 conference (2007), among other venues. Earlier monikers included Mash-up Toolkit, Mash-up Fabric, Mash-up Framework, etc.

Previous capabilities included:

a mash-up builder GUI
widget libraries
an enterprise Web Services directory
tools for exposing existing data and RSS feeds as services
various integrations (mostly around the Websphere stack)
visual programming (a “pipes” metaphor)
a wiki or portal framework for end-user access to the mash-ups

IBM even bundled partner software into previous mash-up toolkit offerings, including the JustSystems xfy client (JustSystems was a sponsor for IOD in previous years).

While it’s good to see that IBM hasn’t abandoned their investments in mash-ups entirely, their uninspired efforts to promote mash-ups (outisde of IOD), and the lack of progress over multiple years still leaves me with the impression that this is a half-hearted attempt to commercialize R&D, not a strategic product program. Mash-ups can fill a valuable niche in the enterprise, and I recommend them to clients who need data-document integration and enterprise application integration. Mash-ups are particularly well-suited for “integration on the glass” – bringing information from multiple sources together, especially when little to no business logic is required for the end-user application. Having a mash-up offering from IBM provides a “safe” option for enterprise architects, especially considering that other mash-up platform providers are struggling in the face of lackluster demand and weak adoption in the enterprise.