For years, web-based software has promised to radically transform the software industry. Cheap, simpler Web tools are much more attractive to corporate customers, compared to antiquated, expensive subscription software.
Large, incumbent business software providers are jumping on bandwagon to provide these tools -- even as they try to find ways to protect their old, better-paid business.
IBM, for example, has been developing an "enterprise mashup maker" since last year -- web-based wiki software called QEDwiki (see video example, below).
QEDwiki ("Quick and Easily Done") is designed to help businesses quickly put together a set of software widgets customized for their particular operations using a drag-and-drop interface.
To flesh out QEDwiki's offering, IBM has announced a partnership with a venture-backed data company called StrikeIron.
Durham, North Carolina-based StrikeIron provides live business data from financial markets, news wires, and 100 other sources, as well as tools to help integrate this data with companies' existing business software.
IBM will now let QEDwiki users access some StrikeIron data services through specialized widgets (available here) that users can drag and drop into their wikis.
The data services include tax data about e-commerce transactions, ways to verify addresses and phone numbers, Maquest-based maps, and worldwide SMS.
These deals are a necessary step in the evolution of business software because decision-makers at large businesses are hesitant about working with startups, according to Forrester. Chief information officers at large companies report a "strong desire" to buy web technologies such as blogs, wikis, rss readers and social networking tools as a suite. But "equally strong" is their desire to purchase these technologies from incumbent business software providers, such as Microsoft and IBM, Forrester reported in March.
Salesforce has been a leader in trying to do something offer services from a larger platform. Even Google is going after this market. It has its own platform-type program running with third parties, called Google Enterprise Professional. Earlier this week, Google announced the addition of Etelos to its official list of "enterprise" partners. Etelos provides customizable web applications for businesses, including a customer relationship management set of widgets that integrates with a user's Google Apps start page -- another drag-and-drop interface to help employees manage their data.
Etelos tells us the it has around 6,000 businesses using its Google application since it launched in February. The company also provides server support for other developers building software that integrates with Google Apps, as well as a marketplace for applications that work with a wide variety of other web sites.
QEDwiki demo here.