I am going to continue to beat the mashup drum because I believe this is the year of the data.

Well, at the heart of most business problems lies an answer in the data. This is not new. For years, we’ve tried to get at this data and have been partially successful, but not efficient, nor completely satisfied. Along comes the mashup. The tool that unlocks this data, makes it relevant and accessible to the average business user. No longer do we need to think of data as buried in some legacy back end system, siloed, or randomly sprawled across the Internet. Mashups are not a new concept either, only their acceptance has been limited. Security concerns have been at the forefront of most IT departments, hence slowing mashup adoption. However, web services have taken mainstream in the enterprise thereby giving mashups consumable data sources. As data storage shifts to the cloud, mashups will become even more important, since there will be no IT department to create my query or write my application.

As ATOM feeds replace RSS, and RESTful interfaces get built into applications, the IT band will begin marching to the mashup tune.