Mashups Give Defense Department Strategic Edge (
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To
make the right decision, it's essential to have the right information at the
right time. But just what information is needed, when and in relation to what
other information is a subtle science that tests the mettle of IT managers
everywhere.
In
the armed forces, victory and defeat—not to mention human life—may hang in the
balance of every decision that is made. In its ongoing effort to enable better
decision-making, the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency, or DISA, has deployed
an enterprise mashup server running JackBe software to bring together strategic
information from disparate sources, particularly geographic and mapping data.
"The
DOD [Department of Defense] has the ability to mash up multiple data sources on
the fly and display them geospatially with off-the-shelf products," said DISA
CTO David Mihelcic.
A
mashup is generally understood to be a Web application that combines
information from multiple sources to create a single new piece of information. Enterprise mashup software,
according to Mike Gualtieri, an analyst at Forrester Research, provides tools
that enable users to create mashups at the application layer.
Although
there are many vendors offering mashup capabilities, there are only three
vendors offering enterprise mashup software: JackBe, IBM with its Lotus Mashups
tools and Serena Software with its Business Mashups offering. In a report
issued in May 2008, Forrester predicted that the enterprise mashup market would
reach $682 million in 2013, growing from only $39 million in 2007.
Click here to read more about JackBe's Presto mashup tool.
However,
a distinct mashup product market has not yet emerged, with products existing in
related and often overlapping fields, such as application development and
decision support. After bursting onto the scene several years ago, mashups
looked like a contender for the next big thing. But Gualtieri predicts that mashup
software will sooner or later be assimilated into the development tools market,
often as a feature of other tools. "Mashups are really in the category of
end-user developer tools," said the analyst.
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