Friends of nFold,

When a google search returns 50 million hits and 48 million of those were created within the last year, then chances are you've struck upon a buzzword. Can you guess the phrase from the definition: "An application built by combining multiple services"? I thought not! It contains far to much IT jargon. Yet, the concept is an important one to the future of software. So that's why today's Minute is all about "Composite Applications". I came across the phrase again and again while researching my recent article on the five software trends that will affect your business. In particular, it was mentioned by the world's major software companies in relation to their plans for the future.

But what does it really mean? In English? The simplest way to imagine a composite application is to think of your web browser. It gives you a single way to work with websites anywhere in the world. The idea behind composite applications is the same thing, only for software. When you click on different buttons or functions in your software, you don't care who wrote the code or where the function resides, as long as it works. A tall order for most software, some of the time, I'll grant you.

More importantly...what does it mean for you? Hopefully composite applications will result in cheaper software that's easier to use and allows you to pick and choose only what you need from a world of possibilities. A real world example, from the present not the future, is the AppExchange built by Salesforce.com. For a small monthly fee (if your pocket works in dollars), you can subscribe to a whole world of software functionality that's all accessible by means of a single login and password via your web browser. The sky's the limit (or in the real world, the credit on your debit card).

Focusing on the lighter side of software matters for managers, this newsletter is released every few weeks and should not take more than a minute to read.

Till next time, keep smiling :-) 
subs@nfold.com
(011) 486-2418