StrikeIron Announces Business Mashup Challenge Winner

StrikeIron Announces Business Mashup Challenge Winner

Apatar Founder and CEO Renat Khasanshyn winner of the best mashup using a StrikeIron service

Research Triangle Park, NC – August 1, 2007 – StrikeIron Inc., the leading provider of Data as a Service (DaaS), today announced the winner of the best mashup using a StrikeIron service at Mashup Camp 4’s Business Mashup Challenge.

Renat Khasanshyn, Apatar Founder and CEO, was awarded the prize for his mashup titled “Salesforce.com SMS Mashup using StrikeIron SMS Web Service”. The mashup allows Salesforce.com users to send SMS (or text) messages to their customers and prospects from within Salesforce.com. To see more on this mashup please visit: www.apatarforge.org/wiki/x/AQA1.

Mashup Camp 4 took place in Silicon Valley from July 18-19, 2007. The term “mashup” has been coined to describe the ability to rapidly bring together data from the web, enterprise applications and web services to deliver a richer experience and a wider range of capabilities to the end user. Mashup Camp was attended by over 300 developers who were looking at mashups as a way to quickly bring together data both in and outside of the enterprise. The Business Mashup Challenge provided a stage for developers to test their skills using the latest mashup assembly environment in order to drive innovation and demonstrate the power of situational applications to reduce costs and time to market.

“The idea for the ‘Salesforce.com SMS Mashup using StrikeIron SMS Web Service’ wasn’t theoretical. It came from a project Apatar did for Salesforce.com users. At times an SMS message to a customer or prospect makes perfect sense, especially for automated notifications and alerts. The ability to send a one-time SMS message to a Salesforce.com record gives users a new invaluable channel of communication,” stated Khasanshyn.

In addition to the StrikeIron SMS Web Service, the mashup also included customer records, extracted from Salesforce.com using Apatar Data Integration software application, and was assembled on IBM’s QEDWiki. Khasanshyn also won the “Best of Conference” prize along with Mark Madsen, CEO of Third Nature, for their mashup titled “Cold Call Assistant.”

“The ability to easily integrate text messaging into business applications is powerful. Our Global SMS Web Service is one of the most widely used services in our growing marketplace and we are excited to see it leveraged as part of this contest,” said Bob Brauer, CEO and president of StrikeIron. “Renat’s mashup provides instant business value for Salesforce.com users and is very deserving of this recognition.”

About StrikeIron
StrikeIron is the leader in Data as a Service, facilitating the consumption and distribution of live data and business functionality over the Web. The company’s breakthrough Web Services Marketplace provides a technology platform, micro-transaction management and a consistent interface across many XML-based Web services from multiple, diverse sources. This allows end-users and ISVs to customize and integrate external data sources and additional external functionality into enterprise, Web, and composite applications. Currently, StrikeIron provides over 100 live data sources and business functions as well as a set of products and tools to simplify and accelerate the consumption of data such as StrikeIron’s SOA Express, enabling business users to access live data via front office applications. StrikeIron services over 700 customers and partners such as BEA, Delivery.com, IBM, Honda Europe, D&B, Time Warner, Siemens, Nike, Kenwood, and Exclusive Resorts. For more information, visit www.strikeiron.com.

About Apatar
Apatar is the leading provider of open source software tools for the data integration market. With powerful Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) capabilities, Apatar enables its users to easily link information between databases (such as MySQL, Microsoft SQL, Oracle), applications (Salesforce.com, SugarCRM) and the top Web 2.0 destinations (Flickr, Amazon S3). Apatar provides support, training, and consulting services for its integration solutions. Headquartered in Western Massachusetts, Apatar operates a development center in Minsk, Belarus. Apatar is currently used by 250 organizations and individuals worldwide. For more on Apatar, visit http://www.apatar.com or http://www.apatarforge.org. For more information, visit Apatar Press Room, at www.apatar.com/newsroom.

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Cindy Akus
Crossroads Public Relations
Telephone: (919) 821-2822
Mobile: (919) 414-6082
Email: cakus {at} crossroadspr(.)com
www.crossroadspr.com