Recently I presented a “guest editorial” to ebizQ.net readers. In this article I tried to explain how to get started in the mashup business and monetize your mashup efforts. Six examples of possible monetization models might be of interest to mashup developers and remind you of the basics providing the success of a useful information resource. Special thanks to Dennis Byron who invited us to share our thoughts with ebizQ.

“Despite what many people tend to think, mashups are not just grabbing someone’s Web content. A well-made mashup is actually a brand new information resource, which is unique, genuine, and represents a greater value than its single components. If the mashup fails to meet the above-mentioned conditions, one can write it off as a dustbin full of informational garbage.”

Read the full article…

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Found a great post by Paul Weinberg observing a recent survey report by Taneja Group, storage and server industry analysts. They surveyed 238 IT decision-makers in North America and Great Britain around different industries. To give you an idea about the audience, I’d quote that “53 percent of users had 11 terabytes or more of unstructured data in their environments”.

So, what’s the state of corporate information in today’s enterprises? 62 percent of the respondents reported that the unstructured data within their companies was growing between 16 and 75 percent per year. Despite the fact that the dispersion in this result is definitely too wide, this seems to be true.

Taneja discovered that the major drivers for unstructured data growth among survey respondents are Microsoft Office (78 percent), e-mail attachments (66 percent), and backup and archival (81 percent combined).

As you can see, enterprises are still sufering from files disintegration. For them, it is still a challenge to manage e-mail attachments and MS Excel spreadsheets as a part of one-view structure or SOA.

Furthermore, Steve Norall, senior analyst at the Taneja Group, is inclined to think that people are not going to move all of the data into a single storage space. Why?.. Due to huge expenses. (Yep, yep, the open source middleware is a Joker here.) So, he predicts that file management and integration companies will benefit from this and “should prosper”.

Finally, the majority of respondents expected their file management and control budgets would grow by up to 20 percent in the next 12 months […]

This means the problem is really a headache and the executives are ready to pay for a solution. Besides the adoption of open source data integration and file management software, I expect that any related services are going to be on the rise, as well. One of the probable solutions is to take an open source toolset and allocate a budget for customizing this software to your unique integration needs.

In this case, the unstructured data management costs may stay far below the 20 percent level expected by the executives.

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Dear fellows, inviting you to read the technical article I’ve written for TechRepublic. Complete with diagrams, this how-to guide covers 5 steps necessary for building an integration with Salesforce.com.

“If you’re considering or currently administering a SalesForce.com account, this article may help you explore how to integrate your CRM data between SalesForce.com and in-house databases, flat files, and legacy applications. Here’s a deep look at how to get the job done without having to study SalesForce.com APIs and writing, debugging, and maintaining custom code.”

Read the full article at http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/datacenter/?p=265

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Dion Hinchcliffe explores “The 10 top challenges facing enterprise mashups” in a recent post. Have a look at his article to get an idea about the state of business mashups today. He raises urgent questions and issues.

If enterprise mashups unleash hundreds of new applications inside an organization, then who will catalog them, support them, maintain them, and fix them when they break? The IT department? The business units? Using what tools? This is an objection I frequently get from enterprise IT about their fears that mashups will bring back the horrors of having unsupported Microsoft Access-based apps running loose in their organization […]

Definitely, without support or, at least, ongoing collaboration, mashups can become just some old toys buried in a sandbox. That’s why it is a critical challenge when you consider any data integration or mashup tool. Are there community that can help you solve your problem? Do they sell a non-customized product, or it is constantly evolving and can be adjusted to your current needs? What plans do hey have for the next few years? Sometimes it is important to look beyond tomorrow.

Dion also referres to another article, which predicts “Ten strategic technologies to watch in 2008″. To name few, metadata, virtualization, RSS feeds, etc. And mashups are on the list, as well!

Furthermore, I’m proud to say that Apatar deals with most of these technologies already.

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Microsoft’s Silverlight breaks the news of the week. Launched on April 15, it is already called “an Adobe (Macromedia) Flash killer”. Well, it sounds a little bit overconfident. Actually, Microsoft just tries to collide with Adobe by grabbing a niche from Flash. The question is will it really succeed in becoming the only winner. You want the answer? “Doubtful!”

Silverlight aims at RIAs development market and will be mashed up with Microsoft’s Virtual Earth here and then, but it won’t replace Adobe’s Flash. In this “war”, Microsoft is not the leader; it is the follower. It’s too late to set new standards. Maybe, a piece of a market will be a reward, but not the whole game. However, I agree with Ryan Stewart about the situation in general:

Of course, those two companies are starting to get into each other’s areas, but in the grand scheme of things, that isn’t really important. We’re seeing a definite blending of the software world where being “on the desktop” or “on the web” doesn’t really matter. People are just excited about building engaging user experiences, and they want technologies that make that easy to do and in a way that is good for users. […] As both companies develop tools and ecosystems around Rich Internet Applications, developers, users, and designers win.

Well, Microsoft’s Virtual Earth didn’t kill Google Maps yet, so it won’t kill Adobe Flash. Moreover, it won’t be the only winner, either. “The Only Winners” are we.

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It seems like the term “webware” is getting hot these days. Phil Wainewright and Paul McNamara claimed in their blogs that they prefer the word “webware” to the SaaS acronym. This is how Paul put it in a funny manner:

I imagine that to the horse and buggy manufacturers, the automobile was nothing more than the ‘Horse and Buggy as a Self Propelled Vehicle’ (HaBaaSPV). And to the manuscript producers of the middle ages, the printing press (which in the early days was operated by Scribes) was simply the ‘Scribe as an Operator of a Repeatable and Automated System for Increased Productivity and Broad-based Distribution’ (SaaOoaRaAMfIPaB-bD, pronounced Sa-ō-ŏ-ra-A- … oh never mind, you get the point).

Later, he wisely notices:

Whereas the term ‘SaaS’ wrongly places its emphasis on the very technology component (software) that users of web-based applications no longer need to think about. Webware is a revolutionary new approach to satisfying information needs.

The term is also promoted by Rafe Needleman, CNet editor. Rafe suggests labelling as “webware” for all Productivity Applications, Data-Driven Applications, and Community Services, which are being delivered over the Web.
So, we already have software, freeware, adware, middleware, and even mashware (credits to Dave Linthicum). The term “webware” is becoming the edge of this “ware” hype.

But wait, folks! Someone should protect the copyrights, as well. Because there’s a suite of Python packages and tools for developing object-oriented, web-based applications, which is called “Webware for Python”.

p.s. For simplicity, there’s also a word “buzzware”.

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David Van Couvering’s post undergirds the idea that Wiki integration will become the next data integration trend soon. Incompatibility between heterogeneous Wiki formats is an issue, definitely. As a result, a number of software vendors are already developing some integrators between Wikis, blogs, e-mails, and so on.

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) will surely accelerate this future trend. The more enterprises, as well as their departments, consolidate with 3^rd parties, the more they need data-and-knowledge integration. As an “Enterprise 2.0” essential element, Wiki can be seen as a “service” inside enterprise’s SOA model, too. Therefore, some integration tools will be needed to weave Wiki-based data between either sources, or applications.

And you know what? Since Wiki is a collaborative-based effort, open source will be a winner in this game, sooner or later.

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Eric Roch followed his “SOA ESB Product Selection” post with the new one, “ESB SOA RFP Questions”. There he compiled a comprehensive list of generic Request for Proposal (RFP) and Request for Information (RFI) questions that help select ESB/SOA product. Thanks, Eric!

However, even if you have already chosen a vendor, Mr. Roch’s list will surely help you gain more understanding of ESB/SOA implementation. It is better to analyze the answers to all these questions before you sign the contracts. Commonly, there are some challenges and hidden misunderstandings. Be aware and avoid them.   

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‘Software as a Service’ gurus Zoli Erdos and David Linthicum commented on a new study by Nucleus Research. According to the report, companies of all sizes are shifting to project management and content management initiatives, while implementing SaaS technologies. Here’s how Zoli put it:

A new study by Nucleus Research confirms these findings:  63% of companies with over 1000 employees adopted some On-Demand solution, vs. 46% of those with less then 1000 employees.  The study turned up a few more “surprises”, perhaps the most striking one being the market-share of particular types of applications.  Salesforce.com is the poster-boy of SaaS, in fact many would argue they created this market, yet CRM appears to have a relatively low adoption rate amongst SaaS customers, only 32%.  Project Management comes close, 23% of the responding organizations deployed PM solutions.

So, Content Management and Project Management are currently the new growth areas in SaaS world. “Rapid implementation and ease of use were the two reasons cited most often for adoption,” Nucleus reported.

This survey shows how Software as a Service technology is evolving. WikiPedia has already become a standard, as we know. On the other hand, the need for effective collaboration is overwhelming, so it is not a surprise that enterprise CMS is moving towards SaaS.

A number of benefits explain why software vendors adopt SaaS model to improve their project management, too. Process integration is one of the main trends for this year, according to multiple researches.

As a result, one trend produces others.
 

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The hype around Google Apps is on the rise. With the recent launch of this service, analysts are talking about Software as a Service (SaaS) pros and cons. Again. And security is being discussed, either. I liked this excerpt by Phil Wainewright about the fight between on-premise and on-demand advocates:

“So here is a selection of news stories culled from the past few months that allow us to objectively evaluate what happens when users “have total control over things like privacy and security” as Ryan puts it:

·         U.K. company fined over laptop theft
·         Hard drive vanishes from VA facility
·         Stolen Boeing laptop held ID data on 382,000
·         Commerce Department counts 1,100 missing laptops
·         Theft of laptop puts thousands of identities at risk 

And how likely is it that Google will be so lax as to allow any unauthorized access to its servers? As Talkback regular Donnieboy noted in a comment to my post on Google Apps last night, Google doesn’t even hand over search data to Federal investigators.”

Well, it seems to me that the more SaaS is being adopted, the more it is being criticized. It’s natural. However, if SaaS technology were as vulnerable as the skeptics say, then it wouldn’t be so popular. And don’t forget, SaaS popularity is increasing.

To make a forecast, I’d say that the market will surely put everything in its right place. There will be a robust niche for on-demand packages, and there will be other niches for on-premise applications. We’ll see how these niches will shape the portrait of a devoted SaaS optimist.

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