Dion Hinchcliffe on leveraging the convergence of IT and the next generation of the Web.
Dion Hinchcliffe is an expert in information technology, business strategy, and next-generation enterprises.
One of the demonstrations I like to give to show the power of simple services is to use Iridesco's Suprglu to instantly wire together Web services into a new and useful service on the spot. This is the simplest possible mashup you can create but it does combine useful data from multiple sources into a single view. You can do it yourself: copy and paste a few feeds from a few sources of interest and you're off and running.
As the Web matures into a richly intertwined ecosystem of shared content and open services, what some call The Web As Platform, some innovative companies are beginning to offer potentially disruptive products that leverage the Web's growing "platformness". Increasing in popularity in particular are what some people call Ajax desktops, or personalized start pages.
With heavy, rigid, and too technical methods for weaving together systems and processes seemingly on their way out, it's sometimes easy to forget there are many inherent compexities in connecting systems to each other. But one of the promising concepts of Web 2.0 is the idea of small pieces, loosely joined.
One of the classic problems that enterprise integration efforts face is the provenance and accuracy of information aggregated from external sources. If the source information is wrong, how do you tell?
I was invited recently to a high-level enterprise architecture forum being conducted by Microsoft entitled SPARK. Being held the weekend before the increasingly buzz-generating MIX 06 conference, SPARK has the interesting and ambitious goal of creating a mapping between SOA, SaaS, and Web 2.0.
One of the beauties of Web 2.0 software is its viral, engaging nature. If the software does something useful, has valuable data, or an interesting community, the word will spread and it will be used. Or at least the good parts of it will be.
As you read the title of this new blog, the first question some of you will ask is if Web 2.0 is really important to the enterprise. To this I offer a resounding affirmation.