Business Week had an article on business mashups a few days ago. Here is one of their smaller examples.
For any company mulling mashups, there’s a growing variety of case studies. Caryn Truitt owns Cookies, a small Seattle shop that sells cookie-baking gear. She keeps track of inventory using an accounting program sold by Microsoft (MSFT). Now that Microsoft has woven eBay’s (EBAY) auction tools and PayPal payment service into Microsoft Office Accounting 2007, Truitt can upload items for sale onto eBay directly from her accounting software in just a few mouse clicks. Truitt hadn’t sold on eBay before, but it looked so easy that she decided to try it. “It was something I had always planned to look into, but being a small-business owner there are always too many things to do,” she explains. [When Companies Do the Mash]
Another example it gave involved Rearden Commerce.
In many cases, employees won’t even realize they’re using mashups. Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, and JDS Uniphase have begun to use a Web application from Rearden Commerce to make travel and dining reservations. Rearden Commerce provides a marketplace of corporate services, essentially mashing up many services from different providers in the areas of travel, dining, entertainment, conferencing, and package shipping (see BusinessWeek.com, 9/21/05, “A Man for All Services”). Rearden Commerce is integrated with corporate applications such as Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes so that travel and dining reservations automatically appear on an employee’s calendar once they’re made. [When Companies Do the Mash]
Now comes the major news about an alliance between American Express and Rearden.
Rearden Commerce’s Personal Assistant service taps into corporate workflow, identity management systems, scheduling and contacts help employees discover, purchase and manage travel, dining reservations, package shipments, conference and other commerce services from a network approved suppliers. American Express Business Travel is launching under its own brand a marketplace that uses Rearden Commerce’s Personal Assistant and other services. [» Rearden Commerce goes for scale with American Express | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com]
The invisible engine of such platforms is becoming more important.
Invisible engines via Brian Lavoie.
Related entries:
- Recombinant modularity
- Recombinance all the way up, remixing all the way down
- Libraries, maps and platforms
- From web page to web platform
- Web 2.0 again
- iPods, platforms and ecosystems
- The Amazon platform
- Quotes of the day: moving to the network level
- Recombinance
- Service-oriented architectures in libraries
