How do Enterprise Mashups Connect to Your xxxx? Help us fill in the blank!

Loraine Lawson from IT Business Edge put her money on Day 2 of our Free Enterprise Mashup Training, 'Mashups in Your Enterprise', to be the most notable and interesting session of all three training days. And I'm willing to double her bet based on the questions you asked during the presentation. Commonly we're asked, how to you connect to my xxxx, fill in BI, ESB, BPM, ETL, Portal and each answer offers the next step to mashup acceptance and learning. So what's the difference between...

1. Enterprise Mashups and Extract, Transform and Load or (ETL) tools?

Mashups don't move data from one system to another like ETL does. Instead, mashups take real-time data, mash it and get it to the users in real-time. Also, ETL systems move very large raw data sets. Mashups work against smaller data sets that are in actionable form.

2. Enterprise Mashups and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)? 

ESBs transform and route data from system to system. ESBs can also expose data as a WSDL and REST based servics that can be consumed by mashup platforms. Enterprise mashup platforms are designed to combine and move data from systems like ESBs to  the users.

3. Enterprise Mashups and Business Process Management (BPM)?

Mashups happen immediately or in real-time. BPM systems address the long-lived processes and often require human interaction to drive processes to the next level. Mashups focus on data, are executed in seconds and don't require human interaction breakpoints. Most BPM systems expose processes as WSDL services and therefore serve as mashable services.

4. Enterprise Mashups and Business Intelligence (BI)?

BI warehouses and cubes represent a tremendous amount of data that has been ETL'd. BI systems are designed to process vast amounts of data to identify historical trends and to create reports and dashboards. Mashups are more real-time and use BI data as a source of valuable information that can be mashed with other internal and external real-time data.  

5. Enterprise Mashups and Portals?

Portals are traditionally an IT driven solution used to provide a single access point to enterprise content. Unfortunately, portals have promised application development and deep collaboration but have fallen short. Enterprise mashup platforms provide enterprise widgets (mashlets) that 'land' in the portal. The Mashlets can exist as JSR-168 portlets or native SharePoint Webparts.

Here we've answered some of the more common connections mashups have with your existing enterprise systems and applications but there are certainly more. What about your legacy systems, databases and your SOA? Stay tuned for the next round of Q&A where we plan to answer those questions and more. If you haven't had a chance to check out the 'Free Three Day Enterprise Mashups Training' recording, be sure to do so here!