A consortium of technology companies announced the creation of the Open Mashup Alliance in late September. This effort is being led by JackBe and provides open access to their Enterprise Mashup Markup Language (EMML) language through a Creative Commons arrangement. I have written about Jackbe before (see: Jackbe is Refining its Enterprise Mashup Offering). Recently I spoke with John Crupi CTO of JackBe about this new move and other things going on at the company.

John said that the alliance is open to any organization with an interest in the advancement of EMML and Enterprise Mashup interoperability and compatibility. The other founding companies include: Adobe, Bank of America, Capgemini, Hinchcliffe & Co., HP, Intel, Kapow Technologies, ProgrammableWeb, Synteractive, and Xignite.  JackBe also provides a free-to-use EMML reference runtime engine.  The Open Mashup Alliance will steward and enhance the EMML v1.0 specification for future contribution to a standards body.

John said that JackBe wanted to contribute to EMML because the company felt that this was the logical next step in the evolution of mashups.  The development of an open language allows for interoperability and portability for reduced adopter risk and cost.  Additionally, JackBe says customers have been asking for EMML to be made open.  John believes that this is the best proven technology for enterprise mashups out there thus far but knows there is more that can be done in this area.

John said he saw what happened to the early Webservices market when vendors competed on standards, while the industry became fractured.  By using a Creative Commons approach, innovation can be built on top of the current EMML and made available to all members. The EMML specification, along with a supporting runtime reference implementation, documentation, and sample code, is also available on the Alliance website. I think the alliance is a smart move and it will be interesting to see how it evolves.

JackBe has become increasingly focused on enhancing the speed and efficiency of information access. Customers can pull data from several sources to create dashboards on the fly. JackBe is well aware of the need for security and governance based on working so closely with the Department of Defense. John said that they have seen increased adoption in the economic downturn as people look for less expensive ways to manage business data. This is consistent with what I have heard from other Enterprise 2.0 vendors.

Last year they launched the Mashup Developer Community (MDC).  This community offers the general availability of the Presto Enterprise Mashup Platform Developer Edition, along with free training and support. The Presto Developer Edition is a complete edition of the Presto Enterprise Mashup software that can be used by developers indefinitely at no cost. The Presto Developer Edition also includes 50 mashup-ready APIs from ProgrammableWeb. The MDC also provides a support environment for enterprise mashup developers through interactive forums monitored and managed by a large mashup community, including JackBe’s mashup engineers.  The MDC also supports the integration of mashups into the enterprise through specialty areas such as ‘Mashups and SOA’, ‘Mashups and Portals’, and ‘Mashups and Oracle’. The MDC is another good move to spread the creation of mashups and support the Enterprise 2.0 concept.