At the Gartner Application Integration and Web Services Conference, Kapow Technologies, the provider of mashup solutions for the enterprise, unveiled openkapow, the industry's first software service and developer community designed to accelerate mashup adoption and industry best practices in mashup design.

Mashups represent a promising new development approach to building composite applications and enabling easier integration of existing applications, utilizing a host of Web 2.0 technologies such as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), Ruby, RSS, ATOM, REST, and SOAP-based web services. Openkapow is based on the Kapow Mashup Server, the industry's most robust solution for building mashups, currently used by more than 200 organizations, ranging from Fortune 100 companies to Web 2.0 startups.

"IT organizations can benefit immensely from the use of mashups, saving significant amounts of time and money, and meanwhile provide a real competitive advantage to the business," said Stefan Andreasen, founder and CEO of Kapow Technologies. "With openkapow, we hope to accelerate the adoption of mashups in the enterprise through the network effect and grassroots momentum that a large open community can generate."

One of Kapow Technologies' customers in support of openkapow is Intel, which has built an extensive content management system mashup over the past two years. "Intel is pleased to be working with Kapow Technologies on the launch of openkapow, a key development community dedicated to accelerating the deployment of Web 2.0 applications and mashup solutions in the enterprise," said Jason Powell, Kapow Project Manager, Intel. "As a multi-threaded solution, openkapow builds mashups that take advantage of Intel quad-core technology to effectively deliver enterprise benefits to users of the next generation of web applications."

Using a new visual programming language built into openkapow, tasks that would take days in Perl or other scripting languages can now be done in minutes, purely through visual point-and-click techniques. As a result, openkapow solves problems that are impossible by any other means. By taking advantage of the simple human-to-browser interface, mashup creation and deployment has become easier and faster than ever before.

The openkapow site is live, and developers can get started in minutes. The visual design metaphor makes it easy to become productive quickly, and the community-based support forum enables easy sharing of design best practices and tips. Mashups can be developed to solve a wide variety of business problems, including the following examples:

- Portals - modify or extend existing portal functionality

- Web Services - create web services from any existing application component with a web interface (REST or SOAP based)

- Composite Applications - aggregate existing application functionality, combining SOA-enabled and older web-based applications and data

- Data Collection - collect and restructure data from various web sources

Openkapow: Powered by the Kapow Mashup Server, Version 6.2

Openkapow is built on the industry's most advanced mashup server technology, the Kapow Mashup Server version 6.2. Years before "mashup" was used as a Web term, Kapow Technologies had been providing Global 2000 companies with enterprise-class technology that uses a unique and flexible Web-based approach to building composite services and applications. Any application component with a web interface can be quickly and easily repurposed using the Kapow Mashup Server, including Web-based content, data or business logic. Because of this unique approach, enterprise customers are deploying mission-critical portals, integrating existing applications, and creating a new class of composite applications on budgets and timeframes that were once unthinkable. The Kapow Mashup Server is a Java-based solution that supports all leading operating systems, databases, and key Internet and Web 2.0 protocols.