Every developer out there want to make a tool that some thousands of users will be enamored with, but few really offer viable solutions. As for business tools, most of these are either so expensive or so complicated to use that few have the stomach for them unless they are a necessity. According to a story I read on Infoworld , Forrester predicts that the enterprise “mashup” market will reach $700 million by 2013. This I do not doubt a bit, as everything seems to be going modular.

When I was in engineering, the companies I worked for spent millions on software and IT personnel keeping up with the latest management software. Coghead and similar applications claim to be a partial solution these days, but still far from solving the problems of a zillion management solutions. Oracle guru Vince Casarez claims that “mashups” need to be easy to use, performance on a par with Web experience and provide relevant content. This sounds really interesting and useful, and I am sure that everyone at the Web 2.0 Conference was amazed at the apps debuted there, but the missing element is really the power.

These mashups are very useful, but there is a platform out there that takes the game to the next level. Iceberg is a startup I tested some time ago, which essentially allows anyone to create business applications without using code. Iceberg 2 actually just launched and I talked with the founder Wayne Byrne about this new “mashup” buzz. I wanted to know the basic difference between Iceberg and some of these others. Wayne explained it like this: “With iceberg…. you can do everything your average enterprise mashup can do (like kapow for example) + everything salesforce can do in one application.” So, though these mashups are great at connecting data, much more powerful platforms are needed to provide more complex solutions.

In my view, what we are going to see in the near future or modules of enterprise “widgets” for lack of a better term, that can perform varied tasks and be integrated or added to other similar “bizgits” if we can call them that. Iceberg declared war on software a year ago and now Iceberg 2 essentially does of applications building tools what MP3’s did for music. Ironic that the Oracle guy used mashups from music in a similar way. Either way, the era of more refined and condensed business application tools is here. For my money Iceberg extended to the next release will have hayday in this niche.

Note - Iceberg is a proud sponsor of Phil Butler Unplugged.