Industry analysts have repeatedly pointed out that technology is a beguiling proposition and businesses invest expecting to save money or increase revenue, but rarely realize either benefit.

The rapid investment over the first half of the nervous nineties have placed the CIOs under enormous pressure to  become “Value Creators” and  produce or increase profit from existing company property rather than investing further.  This may be connecting the enterprise's data in new ways to give new insights and improve decisions. However, there is an added mandate to be thrifty and manage internal costs to free dollars to create innovation and value. With highly compressed decision cycles and the need for faster recovery of IT investment, consultants are increasingly being asked for recommendations with ROI cycles in months rather than years.

It is in such uncertain times, that the Enterprise mashup has presented itself as one of the promising technologies for the next decade. Let us take a look at what the mashup is and why do analysts think it will be the growth engine for Enterprise 2.0.

So What Exactly Is a Mashup ?
Mashups are defined as “Web technology-based lightweight composite applications created by sourcing capabilities from established content and systems functionality.”

The basic technology has been around for quite some time now and in fact it forms the primary foundation for the Web 2.0 applications. In fact, its quite possible that you have been using several mashups already without being aware of it. Here is a quick example.

PackageMapping.com – Gives you the ability to see a visual representation of the tracking of your packages shipped via DHL, FedEX, USPS and UPS. The mashup pulls out package tracking information from the logistic providers and maps them on Google maps.

I chose this example because it demonstrates the ability of mashups to create value from existing technologies. The underlying services were developed based on business cases which were significantly different from that of the mashup, however the mashup has enabled its sponsors to justify their business case without investing in any significant new technology.

The key defining characteristics that set them apart from other forms of application integration are that they ALWAYS source content or functionality from established systems and have no native data store or content repository.

Conclusion of Part 1.
In the next part : The Conceptual Architecture Model for Enterprise Mashups and the Business Case.

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