In the story about IBM's use of EDI, we touched on the company's efforts with ESB, or Enterprise Service Bus. ESB is a growing effort that is finding traction in the increasingly complex integration of enterprise applications. This analysis of ESB finds that the technology may find a valid role in your organization.

By David A. Kelly, Analyst, ebizQ

Five or six years ago, it seemed like there was finally a solution to the types of integration problems that had rapidly begun to plague companies' enterprise application integration or EAI products. By offering a centralized solution to connect to, transform, and exchange data and transactions across heterogeneous systems, organizations could string together integrated business processes that crossed business applications and business boundaries.

But how times have changed. It's not that EAI products didn't solve the problem; they did and will they will continue to. It's just that the problem has continued to grow. If not specifically in complexity (although it has grown in complexity) at least in velocity and breadth. Not only are companies facing an increasing rate of change within their markets, but the trend towards outsourcing has increased pressure on corporate margins and required even greater integration capabilities. In addition, new regulatory requirements have driven the need for broader integration and higher levels of change and the ability to audit processes across multiple systems. In addition, the focus for many integration projects have moved away from complete, top-down enterprise-wide initiatives towards line-of-business driven projects focused on very specific initiatives.

As we explored my last column these growth of integration needs over the past few years has resulted in a rapidly accelerating move towards different types of integration solutions, and more specifically, enterprise service bus (ESB) approach.

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