When I talk with people about mashups at conferences, what usually comes out first is some kind of variation on data-meets-Google Map. It's not un-interesting, but the talk often dies somewhere right after there, partly because I haven't seen very many enterprise examples.

After talking with Denise Chan from IBM Research at ITEC Houston, I decided to look back into what's changed with Enterprise mashups in recent months. (Mashups, in case you're not up to speed on this, are applications derived from applying data and/or processes from two different applications, usually in a non-integrated way.) Here's some of what I saw out of IBM's efforts. They talked about applications that...

show accounts by region, sales history, customer service incidents and projected sales pipeline by product line. Sales reps can then upload their own planned travel and spreadsheets of account forecasts into IBM Mashup Center which generates feeds to allow them to plan their most effective customer engagement strategy with better insight about the account including external Web-based information on the customer's business environment and even competitor activity.

 from the official press release.

I just read this great post by TechWeb's Nelson King about IBM's approach to Mashups. One of the takeaway points was that IBM is showing a very core commitment to making enterprise mashups work. King points out that this isn't a random skunkworks trial for IBM, that it matters to the core of IBM business. And I agree. 

Interoperability, which has been a requirement for years and years, is one piece of the puzzle, but what's really going on with mashups is the need for business users to drive technical functionality at the speed of light, and with the ability to mix and match information inside and outside of the organization. The recent advances of the web are driving really powerful changes into how we do business, and organizations that integrate some of the core traits that have come from the last few years of web development into the guts of their enterprise business will see the benefits quickly. 

I'm researching more in this space. If you're doing something in the enterprise mashup space, please, by all means, drop me a line or send pointers to the comments section. This is a conversation worth evolving.