Blogging Serena TAG - 6: Anthony Bradley - Gartner

The title for this session was: How to Sell Mashups to Company Leadership. However, Anthony switched the title but that is okay. I am blogging much of the Serena Tag 2008 conference. This is part six. Anthony Bradley is a Gartner analyst who was part of the Mega Mashup panel. He said that mashups are at the height of the Gartner hype curve now. He said that he believes that mashups will pass through the pit of disillusionment and survive.

To set the stage, Anthony said that Gartner has strict definitions about what they consider mashups. Mashups are composite applications that use data from other sources. The content retains its original essence. Mashups are web-based. A composite application that does not meet these requirements is a not a mashup, according to Gartner.

Consumer mashups are exploding. There are millions of mashups and millions of users. Enterprise mashups are still in their infancy. The key enterprise benefits include immediate application development, the promise of user-assembled applications, addressing the long tail of applications, social community involvement, new types of applications, and they can address dynamic processes.

Anthony said to not laugh at Google Maps mashups. Mapping mashups are growing. Many companies are building much more sophisticated mapping mashups than Google Maps with complex visualization as much of enterprise data has location components.

Mashups allow for enterprises to develop applications that change as fast as the situation. They also allow for personal dashboards. He showed us his personal dashboard for personal and professional needs. He uses iGoogle and bemoaned that banks do not yet provide widgets that allow for personal financial data. Anthony said it is coming. One of providers is Worklight.

Anthony said that mashups allows for a panoramic view, as a location view. You can get the big picture through coming data source. In addition, you can get situational awareness. The US military intelligence has many data silos and people have to look at multiple apps. He showed us an application that combines some of these sources to provide better integrated situational awareness of thr Bagdad airport. Situational awareness allows us to combine data to monitor a specific and evolving situation.

I recently learned that the US Army’s Battle Command Knowledge System (BCKS) is now doing a bit of what Anthony describes. With this system, soldiers can build virtual documents in minutes, pulling together the most relevant content from many search results, such as lessons learned, reports and articles written by experienced soldiers, as well as Department of Defense and Army civilians and contractors. This new system helps the experienced soldier better share information with the inexperienced. After new insights are vetted and published, the knowledge can then be placed in a XML-based repository so it can be easily discovered, accessed and used by deployed personnel. To meet this need, BCKS developed the Army’s Warrior Knowledge Base (WKB) repository, search utility and content management system. BCKS forum members can discover content in the WKB and then link to it within a discussion area for further refinement of the discussion topic. So this vision of situational awareness for the military has started. I asked Anthony afterwards if he was referring to the WKB and he said he was referring to a different system. He said this approach is happening in several ways now within the military.

Anthony closed on the community development aspects of mashups. It is web 2.0. You can draw on the insights of many, like the WKB does. Community participation will also help sort out the bad applications, as well as provide much or some of the right data. He went through the challenges of enterprise mashups. I especially liked his picture of a polar bear slipping on the ice behind a sign saying, “Watch for the Ice.” The listed challenges included issues of portability, interoperability, governance, culture, security, gadget availability, and building the business case.

To conclude Anthony got back to his original title, How to Sell Mashups to Company Leadership. Like Oliver, Anthony said your need a business reason for all this. Do not build a generic business case for mashups. Start with a specific business problem. Identify some consumer web gadgets. Assemble a solution on the fly to demonstrate what you can do to senior execs. Then ask these senior execs what if we had these capabilities inside the enterprise? What would it take to build this application with traditional method?