SOEA - Service Oriented Enterprise Architecture

I got inspired from reading Steve Jones’ Blog-post titled: “The biggest lie in IT – Enterprise”, which in short says the there is no such thing as tool that will work across the entire enterprise.

I believe that this is spoken like a true pesimi… I mean architect
No seriously, he has a point. No product is going to solve your problems. However it might help solve your problems - if used right. The only thing that can make enterprise solutions work is YOU. And what you will probably find is that it is not the product that will be your biggest challenge – your biggest challenge is the organization.

Having a tool working across an entire enterprise requires more than the tool, it also requires that it is used in a controlled fashion. An endeavor that requires full organizational support (and power)!

For the people that know me there should be now doubt in their mind that I see ESB as a concept (an ESB) and not a product (the ESB). The reason I bring this up is that I have just read the article “Applying ESB” in the April edition of the CBDi Journal.

It is my conception that CBDi agrees with my view of an ESB, but I have a critique of their latest article where they start to try and specify what is, and what is not, a part of an ESB. In my world an ESB should be viewed as a paradigm which can be used in a SOA. How the ESB is to be perceived within the individual architectural context is part of making a successful SOEA.

The following table is just some of the aspects which should be considered when conceptualizing your ESB – what do you need, what is nice to have and what doesn’t matter?

(more…)

An Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is not a product, but a concept which can be implemented. However, this of doesn’t mean that a lot of vendors is not selling product called ESB’s. That being said, I am applauding the development we are seeing of the products in the ESB-area! This is simply a prerequisite for the implementation of SOA.

Evaluating these products is however quite a challenge as there are quite complex systems, and furthermore the sales-pitches of the different vendors should make any enterprise architect suspicious. Therefore I was pleased to see the initiative of Network Computing where they are testing a series of ESB products (ends at March 16):

• BEA Systems AquaLogic Service Bus 2.1
• Cape Clear ESB 6.5
• Fiorano SOA Platform 2006 3.7
• IBM WebSphere Message Broker 6.0
• Software AG Enterprise Service Integrator (ESI) 7.2
• Oracle SOA Suite
• Sonic Software SOA Suite 6.1
• Tibco

This is really good reading, and I believe a good motivation for the different vendors to make their tools even better 