IBM last week filled some gaps in its portfolio of software for integrating applications using the service-oriented architecture (SOA) model with several new tools, including its first enterprise service bus (ESB) offering.
The company last week also announced some new services from IBM Global Services aimed at helping customers build SOAs.
IBM had long maintained that an ESB was merely a design concept rather than a specific product, but it apparently took to heart user pressure to supply one, said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at ZapThink LLC in Waltham, Mass. An ESB is described as a broker that manages interactions among applications to form a business process.
