Companies can combine their service oriented
architectures (SOAs) with hybrid web applications known as
mashups to promote their products on
third-party websites, according to
Andy Mulholland, global chief technology
officer of Capgemini.
In an
exclusive podcast interview with Computer
Weekly, Mulholland highlighted the potential to develop business
processes based on reusable code that other companies could use on
their own sites using mashups.
Such reusable code could be employed as part of a marketing
campaign to attract new customers, or enable the third-party site
to provide additional value in order to enhance what the business
offers, he said.
"The one lesson of the internet has been that there is a real
business value in standardisation," said Mulholland.
When business processes and technology are standardised, the
main business differentiator then becomes cost, which was where SOA
could add value, he said.
Mulholland is co-author of the recently published
Mashup Corporations, which shows how a company
could use SOA to extend its business.
He said there appears to be polarisation around two trains of
thought on SOA. In the first, people believe SOA is a new form of
integration to extend legacy IT, evolving from enterprise
application integration. "Others believe that it is a revolution on
the scale of the PC network and client server computing," he
said.
With back-end integration, Mulholland said it was virtually
impossible to do anything fundamentally different. "However, in the
front office, the goal to achieve faster business processes means
these processes need to be designed in a different way, and SOA is
a game change," he said.
"There is a considerable pressure for interaction in the front
office where market-facing departments can trade externally and
share information more widely."
According to Mulholland, almost all the technologies that have
changed the way that business operates have come from consumers.
Currently, Web 2.0 technologies are changing the way people
collaborate, and it will be necessary to execute this in business.
Mulholland believes this is the role of SOA.
Click here to get your own
player.
Wise up to mashups, says Gartner
www.mashupcorporations.com
Download the full Andy Mulholland interview
Comment on this article:
computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk