Ronan Bradley's FinanceTech Directions

Readers who lived in the UK in the 1970s will have been surprised at IBM's announcement of SMash. IBM’s SMash isn’t in fact a relaunch of a rather chemical instant potato mix made famous for its slogan ‘For Mash get Smash’ and iconic robots of its adverts . Instead, SMash is a potentially significant development in the maturing of the mash-up in the enterprise. (I say potentially because IBM isn’t telling us much until April.)

To quote form the press release:

“SMash addresses a key part of the browser mashup security issue by keeping code and data from each of the sources separated, while allowing controlled sharing of the data through a secure communication channel.”

The possibility of leakage between sources is a key issue not only from a security perspective but also from an Intellectual Property perspective (the content may be licensed for specific use and this sharing may incur additional fees). I look forward to discovering if IBM’s proposal manages to balance the need for security against the need for usability. While this is the classic trade off with all security, it is particularly acute for Mash-ups which have the ease of creation at the heart of the value proposition.

Ronan