Our friend Laura Quinn at idealware.org has launched a new initiative to help nonprofit software evaluators and consultants understand options for data exchange and integration. For some organizations, all data in one place remains the holy grail.

The reality for most organizations, as well as private businesses and government agencies, lies with multiple data systems. For many, this means living with duplicate entry and incompatible lists. The good news is that more and more software providers now offer standard, documented programming tools for opeing up their system to others and exchanging data in an orderly way.

Understanding how to do it and how to make sense of vendor claims is a daunting task. Idealware's first contribution to this problem is Peter Campbell's article, "XML, API, CSV, SOAP! Understanding the Alphabet Soup of Data Exchange." We were pleased to have Steve Backman review and help edit the article, and Steve expects to be part of Idealware's follow-up on this topic. Watch this space for more.