MindTouch Wiki Integrates Salesforce.com, LinkedIn

With a mind toward becoming the de facto standard for enterprise collaboration software, MindTouch released a new version of its open-source wiki platform that lets users interface with Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, LinkedIn and other applications.

The Kilen Woods release of MindTouch Deki, launched July 22 at OSCON (O'Reilly Open Source Convention), in Portland, Ore., is geared to help colleagues, customers and suppliers work together leveraging disparate enterprise systems and data sources.

MindTouch has come a long way since launching its Deki wiki platform at OSCON 2007. This anniversary release mashes up disparate enterprise systems, Web services and Web 2.0 applications, allowing workers to leverage these assets to enrich the projects they collaborate on.

Deki features the same wiki interface as always. The magic occurs behind the scenes, where the company has written a dozen adapters that enable users to tap various systems and Web services from within the wiki.

These systems and services include SugarCRM, Salesforce.com, the LinkedIn social network, the MySQL database, Microsoft's SQL Server, Microsoft Access and Microsoft ADO.NET, among others.

Users may "surface" or access data from these CRM and ERP applications, databases and legacy systems to create workflow perks, mashups, reports and dashboards.

For example, MindTouch CEO Aaron Fulkerson told me, Deki can surface content from a Microsoft SQL Server or Microsoft Access database and mash it up with Microsoft Live Earth, a CRM app from Salesforce.com or SugarCRM, Google Maps, or LinkedIn.

Users may then work in Deki and add data from these mashups to augment their Web documents and projects.