Serena launches business mash-up exchange

Serena Software has kicked off its Chicago developer conference by making available a software-as-a-service mash-up exchange that enables its partners to build, buy and sell business mashups.

Mashup Composer is a web 2.0 tool that enables users to visually design mash-ups that automate business activities. The tool is designed to address projects that individually are too small to warrant dedicated IT support.

Mash-ups, which have previously been the sole domain of specialist web developers, combine data from multiple sources to create an integrated web application. Also referred to as "custom applications", business mash-ups are sometimes lauded as being capable of bringing gains in productivity and creativity without burdening the IT department.

Sceptics of business mash-ups argue that the technology traditionally exists in a non-business environment, and that it may not have evolved enough.

Rene Bonvanie, Serena's senior vice president of marketing, partners and online services said: "I believe that the enterprise can adapt and adopt what goes on in the wider context of a typical web-user environment and bring it into a relevant framework for business. The concepts are exactly the same, it's just about visualising the solution on a larger scale."

"Given the right tools and the opportunity to build in a SOA environment, business developers can build business mash-ups that can be deployed to a data centre behind the security of a firewall. However, given the trend for every new application to be managed 'up in the clouds', it can be simply managed on the web itself via our on-demand SaaS [software as a service] offering."

Serena says it will provide an online marketplace where "mashers" can exchange pre-packaged mash-ups, web services and professional services.