The quest for agility has spurred the recent rise of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and the face of modern IT integration architecture is changing. Technology stovepipes of the past are now being connected by Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) technology, which provides the backbone for the networking, communication, mediation, and service container management needed to support an SOA. Every integration software vendor provides some form of ESB in its products and the ESB has risen to the status of a de facto standard for SOA integrating. But what's the next step in the evolution of the IT integration fabric?
