RedMonk analyst Michael Cote offers his views on MindTouch Deki for CRM, the new collaborative dashboard for CRM applications introduced by MindTouch and SnapLogic. He writes:

"The operative theory behind things like Deki CRM, then, is to light up that dark data. SnapLogic adaptors hope to make accessing that data easier and possible, and the Deki wiki hopes to provide and UI that finally lets users assemble that now lit data into something usable. And, even more contemporary, the idea is to this mashing up across the firewall, pulling and pushing data from cloud-bound services like SalesForce.

"What I find interesting here is the focus of the packaging. It’s always tempting for a vendor to go out there and target everything - as both MindTouch and SnapLogic have done in the past - but narrowing down to something as specific as just SalesForce and SugarCRM can give a vendor the focus needed to explain just what a mashup is and then, if that works, pull customers and users through the thought exercise of generalizing that compositing across other data and process silos."

Read his full blog post here.