Mashup – n. An audio recording that is a composite of samples from other recordings, usually from different musical styles.
Mashups in music are fun. Mashups in cloud computing can be powerful and even liberating for businesses. When creating a web application in a cloud environment, why should you be limited to your own creations if useful tools already exist? By creating a web mashup, you blend multiple web tools into your own application to create something that gives end users everything they need.
JackBe is a mashup tool provider using Microsoft’s Azure DataMarket to develop dashboard apps. By running JackBe in Azure, end users can create their own web application mashups, making use of data sources (SQL Azure, Dallas, or OData) already available in the Windows Azure Marketplace.
One example JackBe highlighted featured a logistics app that plans routes for delivery of perishable foods. Keeping food fresh is a priority with the delivery, so the mashup makes use of data sources from the marketplace such as:
- Bing maps with Navteq dynamic routing
- Microsoft Dynamics on Demand customer order data and real-time Weather Central data.
- Microsoft SharePoint – sharing online information about the location and routes of delivery trucks
- Azure DataMarket: constantly updated fuel prices and the locations of filling stations.
With advanced cloud computing power, businesses have the tools they need to blend streams of content seamlessly into their web applications, and Windows Azure , along with JackBe, makes this possible. For more information about JackBe’s mashups in Microsoft’s Azure Marketplace, you can watch their video walkthrough of the Open Government Data Mashup.
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