Mashups or The Power of Web 2.0

Last week, I attended the Sys-Con “Real-World Ajax” Seminar in New York. I have not yet decided if the event deserves a blog entry – some of the 10 presentations where definitely interesting. But one thing that came up consistently was the term ‘mashup‘. A mashup is a web application that combines data or services from different sources to create added value. I was initially not excited by this concept – integrating content from multiple sources sounded too much like ‘portal’.
But when I discovered this matrix, mashups got a whole new dimension for me. There is definitely something big going on.
Then I read about salesforce.com joining the Eclipse foundation with their AppExchange product. Obviously, someone made the business case that enabling mashups will drive growth and new sales. This is an interesting concept that Google has demonstrated ad nauseam, but here it is applied in a more blunt way. Let’s see if it does indeed help salesforce.com to grow – they are starting to see stiff competition in the SaaS (Software as a Service) CRM space.