By Mike Voss, Director, TPI
A lot is asked of internal IT organizations. Do more. Do it faster. Do it with less. That’s the way it has always been, right? Until now, most of the focus has been on “do it with less.” But today, IT organizations are being asked to achieve all three simultaneously.
Many have added resources or sought other means to develop capabilities quickly. But with aging systems and tight capital budgets, the success of such internal projects is limited. This has led organizations to pursue rationalization, where the question becomes “How can I squeeze more out of my existing applications and budget?” and Cloud Computing and Software-as-a-Service are among the most popular solutions.
This is a sound approach, assuming the rationalization strategy includes the modernization or inclusion of industry solutions. Organizations need to focus on creating the capability to deliver cost-effective, high-quality, flexible and maintainable applications in short order. One way to do this is with a mash-up.
A “mash-up” is an application that combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service. Benefits include reduced development effort, minimized data management and seemingly endless possibilities.
As organizations have begun to recognize the power of mash-ups, they have spurred the evolution of sophisticated tools, security and access control features, governance capability and increased integration with business computing environments. Many SaaS application providers now rely on mash-ups to deliver business value via their product; data service providers are being leveraged using industry-accepted standards to create sophisticated mash-up applications.
Mash-ups are an increasingly common feature of enterprise application portfolios. What new services are you seeing mashed together?
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