Worklight Puts Web 2.0 on Corporate Data

I stumbled upon a new product by Serendipity Technologies called Worklight.

Worklight is a secure and scalable server based software product that provides workers and consumers with 'Web 2.0-style' access to corporate data stored in enterprise information systems and applications... Worklight extracts information from enterprise applications and serves it in a secure and personalized fashion using a host of web 2.0 technologies, both inside and outside the firewall. Personnel are able to easily define their own application views, and then display them through tools like RSS aggregators, popular web based personalized homepages, or desktop gadgets.
(taken from the Worklight Product Sheet - registration is required to see the product sheet!)

The architecture is pretty simple and it's very close to my Event Based Reporting idea. Basically, you build a server product that aggregates snapshots of data from different data sources and applications. Then you feed those snapshots via RSS feeds, Web Services, and the like.

I really think this approach is the future of data delivery. Of course there will always be a need for printed reports, but actionable data needs to be delivered in more general and malleable forms so that tech-saavy managers can gain the competitive edge they need.