Mashups have a reputation for being useful but lightweight add-ons, so here is an example of a seriously complicated extension to a companies key processes

Trend make and sell electronic testing equipment - complex, very configurable products that are sold by their own sales force and through distributors They have a perfectly adequate ERP system running on an AS400 and they use Lotus Notes to handle things like pricing and discount rules.

What the ERP system could not provide was a knowledge based configuration system to ensure that what was quoted for could be built and would work. What the Notes system could not provide was margin control because it all the cost information was on the AS400. To compensate, the salesmen used a multitude of spread sheets to try to gain control.

Trend did not want to replace the ERP system - whatever they chose to repalce it with would still not provide the level of configuration control they sought and most of the system did what they wanted as it was. They didn’t want to throw away all the investment in their Notes developments either.

What they really wanted was a solution that could capture the knowledge needed to configure each of their twelve separate product groups, integrate with their ERP system and Lotus Notes and allow them to create new processes based on all three resources. The processes they wanted to build included knowledge based on-line quotation, order entry, bill creation, margin management and packing and dispatch.

Instead of commissioning a traditional development, Trend selected the Eden Mashup and integration server from Datadialogs primarily because it promised to deliver the entire solution as a code free mashup. They wanted a code free solution because their industry is a fast moving environment and they wanted to be able to respond to change in days rather than months. In other words, they wanted a mashup - a Mega Mashup.

Trend now have their Rich Internet Solution and it delivers all that they wished for. it is available to salesmen and distributors and is entirely codeless. They have preserved their investment in their ERP solution and Lotus Notes and spent a fraction of the money it would have cost to change them.

So pleased are Trend, they have made a demonstration version of the solution avialable over the internet to anyone who is interested, so if you want to see a Mashup with Muscle, use the contact form in www.datadialogs.com and ask to see the Trend demonstration and we will send you the address

Mashups are new processes made up from bits of existing processes and maybe some new stuff. When the idea started, the examples quoted were usually quite trivial and based around web services. For example, adding Google maps to a view within a CRM system - probably useful but technically trivial.

The seed was sown, however, for a more meaningful revolution to get underway - The ability to improve major processes based around a pre-existing IT infrastructure within an organisation without writing any code. This development promised to address the longest and most frustrating problem facing IT - the disconnect between users expectation and IT’s ability to deliver. Even more, it promised real corporate agility.

Technically, however, this development threw up some more problems as follows: First, most existing systems in use do not expose all, or perhaps even any, of their services as web services. So if the technology is based entirely on web services it is of limited application in most businesses unless they are prepared to spend mega bucks replacing their current systems or wrapping them in technology to add web services to them.

Second, a split emerged with one set believing that the IT department should have no role at all and another believing that IT has an essential role to play. I belong to the second group, and the reason is this. Unless Mashups are going to continue to be trivial, then access to data held in existing systems will be necessary. Non IT personnel will not have any knowledge of data structures within the various applications and so will not know where to look. Also, it cannot be a good idea to let all in sundry access, read, amend and even update data.

For these reasons, we have designed a Mashup product that is made up of two parts - A server that sits under IT control and a Mashup designer that can be used by anyone. IT set up the server and determine what parts of which data sources can be accessed and how they can be manipulated (They can even re-name columns and fields within the Mashup server to make them more accessible). They also determine what resources can be called on such as email servers and finally they control what Mashups are released for use.

The Mashup designer is a totally codeless, scriptless composing environment (in fact, the whole system is codeless. No code is written and none is generated) which includes a very advanced rules engine coupled with drag and drop JAVA screen designer.

Using this approach, our user community have created new processes covering quotation, product configuration, order entry, margin management and much much more. These are not trivial Mashups - these are Mashups with Muscle and make a real contribution to the business.