Mashups are getting a lot more focus at the present time. I believe that the reason for this is that mashups can deliver to the 3Rs

* Return value quickly
* Rapid deployment
* Reuse of existing capabilities

As part of my understanding in this area a pulled together a slide show on the evolution of mashups.

The next steps from this slide show are to better understand the value a corporation gains from exposing their data as an API to the public. One way of doing this would be to understand the actions/interactions that a business partner or customer performs with the corporation, from here we can identity chunks of function that should be considered for exposure.

We always have to understand the hard dollar return of any investment and it is unclear how that value will be realized. There is a sentiment umoung the Social Media community that people just need to “get it” but this doesn’t help a financial case.

Once we can justify exposing internal APIs then I believe that the corporation will enjoy additional benefits. However, there are only a few examples where this is documented e.g. NBA web site opening a store which relies totally on Amazon. Amazon didn’t even know that the NBA were doing this as they were using Amazon’s APIs.

I think we can say that “innovation” will happen when APIs are exposed to the public but it is still unclear how to quantify these additional benefits.

Initially we will be looking at customer retention and customer loyalty as the by products of delivering a Web 2.0 experience that better serves the customers needs. There ain’t anything new about ensuring that the customer is satisfied!

Here is an Enterprise Mashups slideshow please have a flick through. As always comments are appreciated.

 

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