As a charter member of the Serena mashup exchange, we welcome the opportunity to discuss how our business-process consultants can help your organization enable business users.
Enabling business users with technology is only half the picture: changing the way people conduct business is the other half.
SaaS has started a business-led revolution in software, which Serena is now ready to kick into high gear. Join us in the next popular uprising—bring out your developer side!
The Mashup Exchange is open for business!
What are business mashups and how are they different from other types of mashups?
Mashups come in three general flavors: consumer mashups, data mashups and business mashups.
Consumer mashups combine visual and data elements from two or more sources. They usually solve some small problem such as finding the shortest distance to a destination by plotting the route on a map.
Data mashups are used to combine multiple data sources into a single source. For example, you might want to combine all of your RSS feeds into a single mashup.
Business mashups solve business problems which are typically process-driven. Business mashups allow you to combine visual and data elements from multiple sources within a process-driven framework. Unlike consumer or data mashups, business mashups keep the state of your process in progress and provide the data and visual elements you need when you need them.
How can business mashups help me?
Can you think of some small applications that would help drive new business or make your operations more effective? Don’t you wish there was a way you could build these applications yourself, without having to wait for or rely on IT? That’s exactly the purpose of business mashup. They allow you to create automated processes, tie these processes in with multiple back-end or cloud-based systems while providing the unified experience we’ve all come to expect from mashups.
What Industry Analysts are saying about Business Mashups
Beagle Research Group, LLC
“Serena’s Business Mashup solution enables users to quickly and easily integrate their business processes across application boundaries—that means SaaS and legacy applications as well as front and back office solutions. This is a big deal for companies trying to automate end-to-end processes to improve the customer experience.” – Denis Pombriant, Managing Principal for Beagle Research Group, LLC
International Data Corp
"Global 2000 organizations and others seeking to take advantage of the capabilities of Web 2.0 are beginning to struggle with lack of change management, versioning, auditing and other capabilities. The evolution of products with existing strength in managing the life cycle to create mashup tools and Web 2.0 is key and we expect expanding offerings in this arena over the next 12-24 months." – Melinda Ballou, Program Director for the Application Life Cycle Management Service at International Data Corp.
Ovum
"With its deep roots in process-centric ALM and workflow tools, Serena is well-positioned to bridge the gap between the new world of SaaS, SOA and Web 2.0 for the business.” – Ian Wesley, Research Director for Ovum
THINKstrategies
“Our research found long ago that user acceptance of SaaS is far broader and growing much faster than others have recognized. We believe the availability of new, easy to use application development tools for SaaS, such as the Serena Business Mashup solution, will accelerate enterprise adoption of this on-demand alternative to cumbersome and costly legacy software.” –Jeffrey M. Kaplan, Managing Director of THINKstrategies and Founder of the SaaS Showplace