Mashups are the latest Internet buzzword. Many experts are touting mashups as the best thing to ever happen to Web applications. But what exactly is a mashup? And, what will in mean to Web-based business intelligence in the years to come?
A mashup is sort of like a puzzle. It’s a fully-interactive Web application that is “mashed up” from the best pieces of other Internet-based systems and data sources. These components are combined to create entirely new services for end users. An e-commerce site that allows buyers to calculate shipping costs by drawing directly from the functionality of US Postal Service’s Web application for shipping estimates represents a mashup in its simplest form.
Mashups have been around for quite a while, but have mostly been applied in consumer- or social networking-based environments. The primary reason companies have been slow to embrace mashups are their potential for increased risk.
According to Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst and principal at ZapThink, a service orientation and enterprise Web 2.0 advisory firm, “clearly no business would risk allowing any of its employees to assemble and reassemble business processes willy nilly, with no controls in place.” He stresses the importance of rigid corporate policies and strict governance – guidelines that most organizations currently have yet to implement.
Yet, the value of mashups is undeniable, and companies are quickly realizing that they provide a fast and highly effective way to build powerful new mission-critical Web applications, or add more robust functionality to their existing ones.
Mashups become particularly beneficial in the case of business intelligence, where they can extend reporting and analysis capabilities in ways that never before seemed possible. With mashups, reporting applications can draw directly from any Web-based information source, providing richer and deeper insight by combining intelligence gathered from across the Web with data that resides in enterprise systems. Or, a BI dashboard can be enhanced by incorporating elements of Google Maps or other Web applications into the environment, allowing end users to dynamically present report output through those vehicles.
But perhaps the greatest impact mashups will have is through their ability to enable IT staff to truly embed BI into other applications. Through a mashup of various APIs, end users can conduct more detailed and comprehensive reporting directly from within a CRM or ERP application. Or, report output can become fully embedded within automated workflow or business process management systems, where the generation of a report can dynamically trigger a subsequent event, based on its content.
Imagine this scenario: A warehouse employee pulls a product off the shelf, and logs the transaction in the company’s inventory management system. An updated inventory report is automatically run each hour and sent to the warehouse manager via email. However, the employee’s removal of the product has caused stock to dip below acceptable levels, and the warehouse manager is away from his desk, and therefore, unaware of the problem and unable to correct it. With a mashup, that report – and the issue it indicates – can automatically and instantly trigger a re-order through the company’s purchasing system, replenishing inventory before customer orders go unfulfilled.
The benefits that can be achieved through the use of mashups, as well as the ways in which they can be applied to extend and enhance BI applications, are virtually unlimited. With the correct policies and procedures in place, companies can fully leverage mashups to ensure that intelligence drives the most effective decision-making and process execution possible.
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