The company will roll out its cloud offering at the Web 2.0 show April 22.Not to be outdone in the mashup wars that have flared up among Web 2.0
platform providers, Kapow Technologies is preparing to roll out its Kapow
OnDemand enterprise mashup and Web harvesting service.
The company will introduce Kapow OnDemand, which the company says will help
turn the Web into a personal information service for users, April 22 at the
O'Reilly Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.
The offering also will deliver data directly into Excel spreadsheets.
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In conjunction with the Kapow OnDemand announcement, the company also will
announce its Kapow Connector for Excel. With the Kapow Connector for
Excel—particularly when used in combination with Kapow OnDemand or the Kapow
Mashup Server Web 2.0 Edition—Excel users can find and execute Web services
that deliver data directly to their spreadsheet, Kapow officials said. In
addition to Excel spreadsheets, users can import Web data into existing
applications and IT infrastructure via XML, the company said.
"Obtaining access to data, converting unstructured data formats and IT
governance are among the top issues hampering enterprise mashup deployments
today," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink. "Kapow
OnDemand removes these barriers. Business analysts now have the ability to
create automated robots that collect and integrate Web data directly into
Excel, which is one of the most pervasive desktop environments in use
today. Meanwhile, IT departments have a solution that gives them more
control and choice in their level of involvement with mashup and Web
intelligence projects."
Mashups: Are they an IT nightmare? Read more here.
The OnDemand service is deployed on a commercial-grade grid computing
environment with security, reliability and scalability akin to a typical
enterprise data center, the company said. Kapow OnDemand also includes a Robot
Designer feature for users to create custom Web harvesting feeds and services.
Company officials said nontechnical users should be able to build robots in a
matter of minutes with minimal training.
"We think this news is exceptional because of the on demand nature of
the mashups it supports. Basically, organizations can use Kapow's software to
create Web-based mashups inside the network, or the OnDemand product to do the
same in the Internet cloud, or any combination," Bloomberg said. "In
essence, mashups can be portable and location independent, making them quite
powerful and frankly really cool."
Pricing for Kapow OnDemand starts at $3,400 a month.
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