To be frank, middleware has not historically been the sexiest of IT subjects. At times about the best description of it in layman's terms has been 'plumbing software'. Less complementary still, the plethora of diverse and often conflicting standards and proprietary technologies has seen it referred to simply as 'muddleware'.
But in recent years that perception has changed, as increasing numbers of enterprises come to the realisation that there is real value to be gained from more effective, flexible and transparent integration: be that integration of data, applications or indeed business processes. Middleware is the enabler of that integration.
But just as crucially, the rise of the concept of the service oriented architecture (SOA) has forced IT vendors and their customers to readdress their middleware strategies. While SOA promises to enable enterprises to break formerly hard-wired processes and applications down into more flexible and reusable components (or services), those components still need to run somewhere, still need to talk to one another, and still need an overarching management layer if they are to bring any value to the table.
