Information Week just published a piece on Mashups. They picked a really in-your-face title for this cover story, labeling it “Half-Baked or Mashed: Is Mixing Enterprise IT And The Internet A Recipe For Disaster?“ I guess in the world of tech reporting you need to use a little fear to get people to pick your journal out of the stack. It sure made me stop and read it. After all, maybe I’ve been encouraging folks to cook up a massive disaster! Oh no!
So, I read it, and, although I have issues with a few minor parts of the article, overall it didn’t paint the gloom and doom scenario that the title pointed out. In fact, it raises some good points (or I guess I should say, it rehashes some good points). For example, the article points out that “Staffers who embrace mashup sites and tools represent a rich, untapped source of business innovation.” I really believe this, and I think all enterprise CTOs need to pursue more mashup solutions to help tap into this resource of human potential.
Some other key points/advice in the article include the following tips for getting ready for a mashup deployment:
GET READY
Before opening the door to mashup technologies, you need to make several important decisions, over and above the question of who’ll develop applications.
It is hard to argue with those points, but I would add the editorial that I have never seen a free tool that will help with this. I’ve seen lots of free tools that can help with pieces of this, but real mashups in enterprises require some very elegant activities to occur in the server room and the free tools that are out there only handle little slices of what needs to be done.
I also want to mention that a successful mashup activity, like most other enterprise IT pursuits, should begin with a vision for what needs to be accomplished. Without a vision then the odds of success will be much lower.
