BI Mashups
Tuesday I attended an interesting session presented by J.R. Arredondo and Dave Pae about putting together Enterprise Mashups using SharePoint Designer for WSS or SharePoint 2007.
Mashups are one of those buzzwords, not unlike Twitter, FaceBook, etc., that sounds like a cool technology my 13-year old would be interested in but which I always try to approach with a bit of skepticism given my focus on business solutions that have ROI requirements.
And so it has been with "mashups" for me...on the radar but a bit unproven in terms of business value.
I think that needle has moved for me as a result of this session. Of course, my primary focus is whether each new technique or technology is relevant to real-world BI solutions (not just something entertaining during a demo).
So how do I see mashups extending a traditional data-driven BI solutions? Well, the ideal would be to take (A) traditional, planned data in a database or cube; (B) add in unstructured data (like sharepoint lists), and (C) access information on the web or from LOB systems using web services.
Modern BI solutions like PerformancePoint solve A+B, but C is not usually in the realm of end-users or analysts who assemble BI solutions.
While the Arredondo & Pae session didn't address a BI environment directly, I can see quite well how to adapt their techniques to do some interesting things. Using PerformancePoint we already have the ability to link to non-BI components, and by combining this with SharePoint designer mashup capabilities I can easily see integrating maps, internal web services and public services via various protocols.
If you haven't looked at Microsoft's Mashup page, take a look at it here: Enterprise Mashups. And if you're not aware that SharePoint designer is now free, download it here and take a look at ways to design rich mashup pages in sharepoint.