BusinessWeek declared 2007 as the year of the mashup. But that year came and went and then some, so looking at 2010 the question is “What is a mashup and are people interested in using them?”
Last week, Allan Wille joined industry leaders to discuss the idea of The Last Mile: Data Visualization in a Mashed-Up World. An MP3 of their discussion can be found on the DM Radio website.
According to Wikipedia, a mashup is an “…application that uses or combines data or functionality from two or many more external sources to create a new service”. However, that definition could be used for nearly everything. And the term becomes a bit more grey when you consider what can be constituted as part of a mashup – must it be totally dissimilar data, or can it also include historical data to put things into context?
Technically any location where data is co-located can be considered a mashup. You iGoogle page is a mashup of RSS feeds from different sources. A website that includes a company’s twitter feed and a calendar to display upcoming events could be considered a mashup.
In business intelligence (BI) terms, a mashup is something that combines information – enhancing context – to provide understanding. As with any BI system everything needs to be placed into context. Mashing up sales revenue and temperature would not provide relevant data, unless you were running an ice cream store. But mashing up something like revenue and hours of overtime can provide some very relevant contextual information.
Mashups have traditionally promised two benefits. The first is to provide accessibility, which has been achieved through introduction of visualization. The idea is that more users can take advantage of the data because they can understand what is being portrayed through the graphics. The second point, and one that mashups have only had limited success at delivering upon, is ease of implementation. This is the idea that any non-technical user could create their own mashup. Today, however, this is mostly limited to RSS feeds which a user can set up, such as an iGoogle page.
While people are not necessarily using the term “mashup” many are implementing the concept whether they realize it or not. More companies are combining data from not only their own data sources, but also 3rd party systems, especially as more SaaS systems are deployed.
There are dangers associated with mashups. As more data is available, it can be overwhelming to determine what information, and from what source, is relevant to the key performance indicators (KPIs) that a company should track. The idea is to really think about what matters as opposed to what can be mashed together. Data quality can also be a concern as information is pulled from multiple sources, which may or may not be qualified and cleansed. The final issue to consider is when drawing relationships. Is the data correlated, as in the case of sales and temperature, or causal, which means that there is an actual relationship between the data points.
The future of mashups will include adding more relationships in clearly displayed formats. The new relationships will include things like sentiment and social data to understand the impact of these activities. And improved visualization will enable more users to benefit from BI without a technical background or in depth understanding of how it works.
There was a pretty even split (42% of respondents saying “Yes”) between those who 
said their company would be willing to pay a small per-message fee to receive Short Message Service (SMS) alerts from Klipfolio Dashboard on their mobile phone. While this is not an overwhelming acknowledgment, neither is it an overwhelming disavowal. Estimates from CTIA claim that 740 billion text messages were sent during the first half of 2009, which equates to 4.1 billion messages sent daily.
SMS is gaining popularity in business applications, as well as for social purposes. Mobile devices make it easier to write and send messages, especially with the inclusion of physical and virtual qwerty keyboards as opposed to E.161 keypads. The ability to send messages from PCs to mobile devices also helps to increase the ease of use. Some companies are using SMS to build brand awareness, send discounts and coupons, or even get feedback from clients by including surveys or asking questions which can be responded to with the push of a button.
Receiving SMS alerts is something that companies have already set up, and it is a feature that Klipfolio is investigating and it lends itself perfectly to Klipfolio Dashboard. SMS is a relatively cheap method to use to be notified of when something happens. And it never fails – the moment you are not at your desk monitoring the KPIs is when the threshold or event occurs. SMS provides real-time information so that corrections can be made while there is still time to have an impact. A KPI is only useful if it is important enough to be tracked (otherwise it would not be a KPI, it would just be a PI), and the best KPIs are ones that need to be monitored constantly because they make such an impact on your organization – so why not ensure that you are notified when the KPIs are in jeopardy?
A little while ago we posted a survey asking about your views on Software as a Service (SaaS). We’ve compiled the results and want to share some highlights, as well as our interpretation of them.
Not surprisingly, 57% of respondents are currently using SaaS in some form, and almost all respondents plan to adopt more in the future. Over the past few years SaaS has been growing in popularity as a way to let people use software without having a “CD hardcopy”. In many cases SaaS makes sense, and it follows along with the responses of the top reasons for why companies use the services.
First, there is less involvement from the IT team. As the user is accessing something that is not installed on their computers, they do not have to get someone from IT to install the program. And this theory extends from a single user to multiple thousands of users.
As well, there is less maintenance and support. Updates are performed by the provider, and can be rolled out quickly and efficiently to ensure that issues are resolved, again without IT involvement. Behind the scenes improvements and instant deployment of the updates, reduces the likelihood and visibility of problems; in theory, resulting in a better user experience.
The third top reason for using SaaS is the lower initial cost and commitment. Most services use a subscription model which helps to make it cheaper on a per-user basis in the near term. However, as the subscription is renewed periodically, over time the total cost of ownership could be higher than a one-time purchase price, which, interestingly, is the top concern for SaaS solutions cited by almost one-third of survey respondents.
Overall, users are satisfied with their SaaS experience. The software is performing the task that it was designed for, but without being invested in the product, many users do not really sit back and consider how well it works. Reliability captured top marks being the only criteria being considered very satisfactory. However, users considered performance and usability unsatisfactory. This is likely due to the fact that there is less customization available when adopting SaaS solutions as you do not own it and are less able to make modifications to it.
One interesting thing was that security concerns where next to minimal, where only a few years ago these seemed to top everyone’s lists regarding SaaS.
Also of interest, was the fact that although one of the benefits of adopting a SaaS solution was less IT involvement, about three quarters of the respondents indicated that administration of such a solution should be a shared responsibility between Business and IT, but with an IT lead.
This is no shortage of information on SaaS. One recent white paper is titled “An IT Manager’s Survival Guide in a World of SaaS” and can be downloaded from Spiceworks community. It provides an interesting look at the change of an IT manager’s success, placing emphasis on ROI and the increased demand to produce more results with fewer resources. It lists 10 tips for managing your career, many of which are also useful for a successful SaaS implementation
