Kapow’s Andrew Lasko recently trained Nate and I on their firm’s mashup server family. For those of you who don’t know, Kapow makes tools to enable organizations to build enterprise mashups – pulling in data from any application that is accessible via a browser. Because the majority of today’s enterprise applications are web-enabled, Kapow can service-enable, integrate or perform ETL agtains almost any web-based application. This approach is quite different then that of traditional SOA. Kapow doesn’t rely on back-end APIs, but accesses an application through the user interface, maps data elements, and allows for integration with other systems. Kapow calls this “data discovery”.

If you or your firm is looking to pull off a complex SI project, you should be excited. We all know that meeting integration requirements are often the most expensive and difficult part of any project. APIs may or may not exist, and they may or may not work. Fixing them might require code changes. But, Kapow doesn’t care if the applications’ APIs work, or have the capabilities you require. The front-end – likely the most well-tested and feature-rich view into a system – is the only view into the application that Kapow needs.

Taking a mashup-centric approach to service-enablement and integration has the potential to decrease risks and accelerate projects for firms that are willing to consider it. Kapow is a smart way for enterprises to get started with mashups, and brings us closer to breaking down some of the barriers to their adoption. It’s still doesn’t give us what some consider the “holy grail” of mashups in the enterprise – an end-user mashup builder and canvas (although folks like IBM, and Intel have some interesting prototypes). But it certainly gets us a step closer, and gives enterprises a reason to take mashups seriously.

A side note: One of the things that’s interesting about Kapow, at least in terms of the E2.0 software vendor space is considered, is that they have a sound, and profitable business model. They make software that people want to buy and (at least according to them) sell lots of it. Maybe a market for E2.0 tools does exist.

• Kapow Mashup Server – Web 2.0 Edition
• openKapow – Free, lightweight version of Kapow with robot hosting
• Microsoft Popfly – End-user mashup builder
• Intel Mashmaker – Another End-user mashup builder
• QEDWiki – Mashup canvas
• Google Mashup Builder – Google’s basic mashup builder

Updated below…an expansion on Kapow’s capabilities:

• Kapow for Data Migration
• Kapow for Content Migration
• Kapow for Portal Content