---
title: "New Product Category: IBM announces a \"mashup server\""
date: 2006-06-17T00:52:05Z
modified: 2006-06-17T00:52:05Z
permalink: "https://redmonk.com/jgovernor/new-product-category-ibm-announces-a-mashup-server/"
type: post
status: publish
excerpt: ""
wpid: 635
categories:
  - Uncategorized
timestamp: 2006-06-17T00:52:05Z
tags:
  - Uncategorized
---

[IBM Press room – 2006-06-15 IBM Executive Declares Web 2.0 Technology to Drive New Business Applications – United States](http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/19821.wss "IBM Press room - 2006-06-15 IBM Executive Declares Web 2.0 Technology to Drive New Business Applications - United States")

Also interesting to see that “Rod declares”… fine example of [declarative living](http://www.squidoo.com/declare/), IBM.

Other mashup servers? [Arguably Zimbra](http://www.zimbra.com/blog/archives/2006/01/developers_guid.html)… “Collaboration Server” is _a bit Marketing 1.0_, isn’t it?

Lizardtech is [pitching one](http://wms.lizardtech.com/portal/?q=node/42).

Microsoft’s Sam Ramji recently asked [what an enterprise mashup server](http://samus.typepad.com/what/2005/11/scoble_intervie.html) would look like. I think Rod just answered the question.

[Adobe Flex](http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/) is a candidate, if it gets the tooling right.

Salesforce.com’s [AppXchange](http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/) could be described as a hosted enterprise mashup server.

Dion Hinchcliffe [is taken with](http://web2.wsj2.com/making_the_most_of_the_web_creating_great_mashups.htm) IBM’s QED Wiki, too. He says: This makes me think of a similar software development phenomenon a few years back. As much as I was never a huge fan of the earlier versions of Visual Basic, they did one important thing right. They made it easy for even novice programmers to quickly create useful business applications from various back-end databases.

We will see plenty more mashup servers announced and rreleased over the next 12 months.

Not much more to say, but if you know of any other products worth thinking of us mashup servers please let me know.

One other consideration. Its pretty boring to here the business modeller pitch from middleware and integration vendors all the time, where they claim the business user models and the code is then autogenerated through runtime magic, because there are so few people out there that actually do business modelling. So the idea is building to a community that doesn’t exist, and has some steep barriers to entry.

I think lightweight mashups on the other hand, pace Dion and Rod, really do have potential to allow business users to create interesting data and service manipulations.

Peace out.

disclaimer: IBM and Adobe are clients. Microsoft is occasionally. Zimbra is not, although we’re going to use their email server.

Tags: [mashup server](http://technorati.com/tag/mashup+server), [declarative living](http://technorati.com/tag/declarative+living), [IBM](http://technorati.com/tag/IBM), [QED Wiki](http://technorati.com/tag/QED+Wiki), [Microsoft](http://technorati.com/tag/Microsoft), [mashup](http://technorati.com/tag/mashup), [Web 2.0](http://technorati.com/tag/Web+2.0), [Adobe](http://technorati.com/tag/Adobe), [Flex](http://technorati.com/tag/Flex), [Visual Basic](http://technorati.com/tag/Visual+Basic), [Salesforce.com](http://technorati.com/tag/Salesforce.com), [AppXchange](http://technorati.com/tag/AppXchange), [Zimbra](http://technorati.com/tag/Zimbra), [Zimlets](http://technorati.com/tag/Zimlets)