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The definition of mashups, how they work, and why they matter to business
Businesses are increasingly recognizing the value of Web 2.0 to 3.0 for improved website usability and design, while completely changing the way users interact with data. Enterprise Mashups are a great way for business to make the most of different data resources, while creating new tools that provide access to information in the right format.
 Enterprise Mashups are somewhat what they sound like: web applications that offer large corporations the ability to access and manipulate large amounts of data from different resources into one combined application, or "mashup." To provide an example, think of a large-scale mashing up of different resources (such as statistics, geographic data, user data, etc) to create a new and robust resource that combines to make valuable new data outputs. The raw data that is used within the application setup can be created using meaningful data collection and business intelligence processes. This is a mashup of multiple types of applications and data that can provide users with new insight to the information. But how can businesses utilize enterprise mashups to create new and meaningful web applications that answer to specific business needs? Some of the ways that businesses are utilizing in-house mashup applications include applications that are functionality-wise similar to Web 2.0; through Wiki tools and other ideas. Wikis are a great Web 2.0 resource for businesses to empower users to combine knowledge and resources to create well-organized databases of key information. Using custom mashups that can extract and organize the Wiki information into categories that can help businesses to automate the organization. The Wikis can automatically have different sections relevant to user needs (such as separating by keywords and combining into one category automatically). The tool can further be improved by allowing for a top relevant article or other Wiki contribution to automatically be propagated onto a related wiki page in a side column, allowing similar and related content to show up for users researching information. Pulling the different information from the Wiki can also be extracted and mashed into a central training portal that allows workers to review key information, relevant to the topic they are researching. Businesses can combine real-time maps and directions to automatically be pulled in with data when a customer searches for locations or other geographically-related information from your website. This can be done by using web services, such as Bing or Google Maps in combination with company location and related services into one application. |