July 28, 2009, 5:11 PM — This is part of a regular series that highlights new books and their authors. Also in this series: Brian Berenbach on requirements engineering, J. Peter Bruzzese on Exchange Server 2007, Joel Scambray on exposing the hacker's advantage, and Scott Hogg on IPv6 security. (You can find all the installments in this series here.)
Susan Bouchard is a senior business development manager with US-Canada Sales Planning and Operations at Cisco, focusing on Web 2.0 technology and co-author of Enterprise Web 2.0 Fundamentals. In this Q&A, she discusses the power and potential of enterprise mashups for creating compellingly broader insights, or 'big pictures' that accelerate problem-solving and decision-making.
Can you offer some advice for creating good mashups?
- Learn as much as you can from other mashup developers and constantly scan for new, innovative use cases.
- Involve IT early in the process to allay their fears of losing governance/control of data provided by existing applications.
- Work with existing application owners to determine which enterprise data should be surfaced in mashups.
- Combine internal and external data in new ways designed to enable users to work more efficiently and effectively.
- Establish a catalogue of mashup capabilities to reuse and share.
And something not to do?
Never violate company data security policy. (and the 5 'H's: hide, hoard, hamper, harm, or hurry)
What are some good resources for creating mashups?
Mashup Patterns, a book by Michael Ogrinz, and the associated Website, include lots of great tips and best practices on building mashups, including mashup patterns, organized by capabilities: Harvest, Enhance, Assemble, Manage and Test.
To learn more about mashups, check out this Introduction to Mashups video on YouTube, the IBM blog, and new Kapow blog.
Finally, my recent Network World blog post describes how mashups are delivering business value to the enterprise, and to Cisco.
Who should read this book?
Every executive, strategist, technical professional, and marketer who wants to learn about Enterprise Web 2.0 or needs to understand its implications.
Any final words of advice?
Explore the possibility, recognize the opportunity, and realize the potential in every technology you use.
