About the Book
Mashup Corporations: The End of Business As Usual tells the tale of Vorpal Inc., a company that pioneers the implementation of service-oriented architecture to transform its business model. CEO Jane Moneymaker believes in marketing manager Hugo Wunderkind’s idea of creating a new market using non-traditional methods based on mashups, but struggles to achieve this vision. The story illustrates what it takes to achieve cultural change, overturning established business and IT structures. By embracing a service-oriented approach Moneymaker makes Vorpal faster, flexible and more responsive, bringing an end to business as usual.
Vorpal’s is an environment that could be repeated in nearly any industry. The challenges facing its executive team (CEO, CFO, CTO, CIO, and Line of Business (LOB) owners) certainly sound familiar. What are the best ways to find new market opportunities, strengthen the bonds with existing customers, empower employees, and seek out new suppliers, all while safeguarding the integrity of the business, its operations, and its brand?
Mashup Corporations takes a unique approach to communicating its message. From the first page, readers will find themselves in a story populated with people who interact in ways that will ring true to others who have struggled to make technology work in an organization, large or small. The conflicts that naturally arise between CEOs, CIOs, and line of business managers illustrate the important issues at stake within Vorpal and most other companies. As the leaders of Vorpal find their way out of their predicament, rules about how mashups and service-orientation can be properly applied emerge. These rules, which may be the most enduring contribution of the book, are illustrated and analyzed using real-life examples.
Table of Contents
In this book we tell the story of a company that discovers how to put SOA to work on new customers and new markets. As we tell this story, some patterns of success will emerge. Each chapter will identify the challenges, key questions, strategy and tactics, examples, and rules that apply to each stage of the transformation.
Chapter 1: Why Can’t We?
A new business opportunity cannot be implemented doing business as usual. The CEO insists the the company find a way. The CIO explains that rules governing IT must change. The story of the company’s transformation is revisited throughout the book.
Chapter 2: The Company and the Innovators
Defining the company’s offering as a set of Web services unlocks the potential of those outside the company to create Web 2.0 mashups and other applications.
Chapter 3: The Company and Its Customers
Instead of traditional HTML, the interaction with the customer is embedded in a user interface that is much more pleasing and productive. Errors are reduced, better service results, and new markets can be created.
Chapter 4: The Company and Its Suppliers
Defining suppliers as a set of services enables a company to increase efficiency, lower costs, and create an ecosystem in which more suppliers can be enrolled. Such a foundation can lead to new product offerings.
Chapter 5: IT and the Rest of the Company
The use of services can unlock the power of shadow IT, the ability of a new generation of information workers to innovate and meet their own needs, playing by rules for safe conduct set by IT.
Chapter 6: The Internal Structure of IT
The IT organization must change shape to support the different functions involved in defining, maintaining, and composing with services that required to support SOA.
Chapter 7: Overcoming Barriers
This section covers the struggle to overcome barriers to adoption of mashups and SOA.
Chapter 8: Our Story Ends, Yours Begins
Advice on how to put the rules and remedies to work in
your business.
Chapter 9: Changing the Game
This is an analysis of how to think about mashups, SOA, and Web 2.0 in an integrated, strategic fashion.
Mashup Corporations is published by Evolved Technologist Press
