Intelligent Enterprise

I remember (lo these many years ago…) when IBM proved that the elephant could dance, and the name of the dance was PC. An obscure IBM skunk works in Boca Raton, Florida hatched this insanely great idea – a personal computer made out of cheap parts from all over the place – and two years later it became the world standard. Now I'm not saying that IBM's embrace of enterprise mashups is on the same order as the PC; but of all the really big IT companies, you'd think IBM would be among the last to adopt a technology called 'mashup.'

As I explored in this case study about a Defence Intelligence Agency mashup, the technology at its most fundamental addresses one of the oldest IT problems around: Delivering appropriate data in a usable fashion to those who make decisions. What's different now, obviously, is the Internet and the technologies behind Web applications and Web 2.0.

For IBM, mashups is not a hot idea discovered a month ago during a bar-hopping session of the marketing dudes. Serious intellectual firepower has been focused on mashup technology for several years. IBM research labs and especially the acquired AlphaWorks group have been chewing on the relevant data delivery, middleware, and presentation layer for at least a decade.

The results are worth considering: First and foremost I'd emphasize XML data storage. IBM's DB2 v9 pureXML, which merges the power of a respected SQL database management system with a truly integrated XML database engine, is a tour de force of technology. It's a strong contender to supply the underpinning of Web services and SOA-based data delivery, which in turn is the substructure of mashup technology.

Since the beginning of the year, IBM has been rolling out mashup related products, some almost experimental, some very seriously aimed at core enterprise clients. The most recent, announced in mid-April, include the IBM Mashup Center, a browser-based tool that allows users to create their own mashups, and IBM WebSphere sMash, a open-source mashup oriented development environment.

What's been a little surprising with the rollout of sundry mashup products has been the willingness of IBM to recognize most of it as a work-in-progress and to let experience guide the product development. This approach apparently has high level blessing. For example, Steve Mills, head of IBM Software has been quoted as saying, "I went through the previous waves of knowledge management — I've lost track of how many waves there were — and it just never worked. You could never figure out all the different ways people wanted to work and needed information. This [new wave] captures some of the excitement of the public Internet, social networking and the wiki community while applying it to business."

The point is that IBM's mashup products aren't from a skunk works operation, but arising from something very close to the heart of IBM, its enterprise IT client base. Mashups arise from client needs, in a way from the bottom up, which for once IBM feels it can satisfy and still play to some of its strengths: data management, IT security and governance, open source tools. Is this an IBM 2.0?