JackBe launches enterprise mashup platform for the cloud
Connecting state and local government leaders
The company's Presto Enterprise Mashup Platform is now available on the Amazon Elastic Compute cloud computing environment, giving software developers the ability to create and share mashups instantly.
JackBe, whose products some agencies already use to create mashups of data, is bringing enterprise mashups to the cloud.
The company’s Presto Enterprise Mashup Platform is now available on the Amazon Elastic Compute cloud computing environment, giving software developers the ability to create and share mashups instantly.
Enterprise mashups are Web sites or applications that combine content from multiple sources into an integrated experience.
Presto Cloud Community Edition combines agile mashup creation with the instant accessibility of a cloud service, said John Crupi, JackBe’s chief technology officer. As a result, developers can connect Internet-based data sources in their own secure workspace and easily share their mashups with community members around the world.
The Presto Cloud Community Edition is immediately available at no cost to all members of JackBe’s Mashup Developer Community.
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Federal and state agencies are natural fits for the use of enterprise mashups. Agencies have volumes of constantly changing data that must be accessible to citizens, government employees or business partners.
For instance, the Defense Intelligence Agency uses JackBe’s Presto Mashup server software for its Project OverWatch, a virtual operating center application that integrates multiple intelligence sources into a desktop-like intelligence asset dashboard for real-time data analysis.
But DIA owns and manages that server on its own property. The question facing agencies now -- regarding mashups and other uses of data -- is how comfortable they feel using a public cloud.
The move to the cloud brings significant benefits, notably the ability to perform rapid development and to address the surge in demand for applications, said Bob Gourley, former chief technology officer of DIA and now CTO with Crucial Point LLC.
JackBe is taking the best of Presto, Amazon cloud computing and service-oriented architecture and putting it in this single cloud based edition, he said. But the first adopters in government will probably be civilian agencies that are dealing with unclassified information, not defense agencies. However, the intelligence community will use Presto Community Center to test concepts and do first stages of development work, Gourley said. Once they are sure that applications will scale well, they will bring them on-premise into the classified network.
“Classified agencies will work with Presto Community, get the code right, build mashups and test all connections,” he said. Then they’ll move the code when they are ready to their on-premise system.
“But developers at the Agriculture, State and Transportation [departments] are not going to have to do that,” he said. Applications intended for citizens, and not required to safeguard sensitive or classified information, are natural uses for a cloud.
With Presto Cloud Community Edition, users can take advantage of a public mashup catalog consisting of hundreds of mashable data sources from JackBe Preferred Partners as well as shared mashup applications created by other community members.
Presto Cloud Community Edition is only a first step, Crupi said. “We have big plans in future releases for production mashup applications in the cloud," he said.
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