Several Web 2.0 tools unveiled by IBM have advanced the growing options for business-based social networking and data mashups.
On Wednesday at the Lotusphere conference in Orlando, Fla., the company showed its Lotus Mashups application and updated versions of Lotus Connections and Lotus Quickr 8.1.
A Trend Toward Mashups
First previewed last fall, Lotus Mashups allows nontechnical users to “mashup,” or combine, various data in ad hoc ways. Using a browser, out-of-the-box widgets, a catalog for finding and sharing widgets and mashups, and a builder for accessing enterprise systems, Lotus Mashups enables what the company described as visualizations that can blend enterprise and Web-based data “to solve real business problems.”
“We’re seeing a real trend happening,” said Oliver Young, an analyst with industry research firm Forrester. He noted that Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and other companies have also been releasing mashup tools for consumers and businesses, and now “a lot of companies are seeing value in mashups.”
The value, Young said, is in enabling knowledge workers to create their own dashboards, where “they can see lots of different data sources in one view.” Lotus Mashups is interesting, he said, in that it enables the user to connect the portlets (views), so that data changes in one portlet affect the data in another.
For many people, mashups mean data overlays on maps, such as all the pizza shops in your city overlaid on a Google map. Young noted that this is only one type of mashup, and that the term means taking multiple data sources and combining them so they can be viewed at the same time.
Eventually, he predicted, we’re going to see mashup tools widely adopted, because “the business value is tremendous,” but he expects that won’t happen for at least a year.
Social Networking for Business
Young pointed out that social-networking tools for business, such as Lotus Connections,…