If mashups sound like the kind of Web 2.0 application best used for checking traffic jams on Google Maps, think again: Mashups within the enterprise environment are becoming common for functions such as integrating social-networking information into CRM tools. And as they get easier to make, they’ll continue to grow in popularity and usefulness.
Kapow Technologies, which creates mashup environments for businesses, has taken some steps forward in bringing mature mashups into the corporation. This week it released several mashup products that aim to bring business intelligence to desktops with little human intervention. One new product is Kapow OnDemand.
“It can be used in any instance where what you’re trying to do is eliminate the manual process of having people sitting there in front of a monitor finding information they need externally, and then copying and pasting it to get it into the environment they need,” said Ed Julson, director of product marketing for Kapow.
Robot Help
Kapow’s mashups work with the help of “robots,” automated tools that collect and integrate selected Web data into a spreadsheet. “If you were a pricing analyst going to a number of different Web sites to collect information on the competition, you’d go to these sites, search for and find what you want, copy that piece of information, and paste it into spreadsheet,” Julson said.
With OnDemand, a robot does that instead. “Instead of a copy-and-paste function, you actually add structure to that data” by embedding the data model into the robot, he explained. “When you bring this information back to the spreadsheet, it has structure; you can put it into a database, and applications understand it. Now you have a way to make connections to anything on the Web.”
All an organization’s subscribers have access to that information to make sharing easier. “There’s…