Mash-up mandates

The trickiest transition for any new generation of computer application is that from nascency to immaturity. For mash-up developers the potential for significant market take-up seems evident mash-up plus-points carry much force in the context of business IT yet even as the factors for success fall into place, the ´tipping point´ still seems a way off. The mashup proposition holds attractions for enterprise IT, especially the potential to enable task-specific browser-based applications (relatively) quickly and cheaply, that energise existing corporate information by combining it with external data sources and other resources online. The mash-ups model is also claimed to be adept at integrating data already ´siloed´ inside an organisation, and enterprise IT strategists will like the fact that mash-ups applications are scalable. But these qualities are for nothing if no standards exist to validate them. Mash-ups are not, of course, completely dissociated from industry standards. They work on standard browsers and are based on open-source software elements; this may or may not be a good thing, depending on an organisation´s stance toward open-source. Some IT leaders recognise the benefits of opensource and embrace it; others think that the compatibility problems it can cause make it more trouble than it´s worth. The mash-up ethos is strongly predicated on ´openness´, both in respect to code accessibility and toward data ownership, but even very open-minded opensourcers may want to see standards-driven controls. The focus here centres around user demand driving better standards and this encouraging adoption.