Rethinking the ESB: Lessons Learned from Challenging the Limitations and Pitfalls
TS-5341

Traditionally, commercial integration and enterprise service bus (ESB) platforms have a reputation of being

• Big, heavy, and expensive
• Difficult to install
• Difficult to set up
• Complicated to learn and use
• A haven for lock-in

Over the last few years, a new breed of open-source, lightweight ESB contenders such as Mule, ServiceMix, and OpenESB has attempted to redefine what a productive ESB offering should look like. Although the current generation of these platforms has made significant inroads into addressing these concerns, this session details and demonstrates how the next-generation platforms are pushing the envelope further and trying to achieve the feat of simplicity and productivity while becoming more versatile.

Attendees will learn

• When using an ESB is appropriate
• What properties to look for in an ESB and how to use it to avoid common limitations
• How open-source offerings are innovating to become highly competitive service platforms
• How these service platforms are adding distribution and topology choices to go beyond the traditional understanding of ESBs

For this session, a basic knowledge of SOA and Web services is desirable.