The bus, of course, is the enterprise service bus (ESB) and as it has gained momentum as a key element in a service-oriented architecture. The market has expanded from the domain of startup specialists to integration and infrastructure players and platform vendors as well as the open source community. According to a recent Gartner Dataquest report, the ESB market expanded more significantly in 2005 than any other application integration and middleware segment, with 160.7% revenue growth.
In addition, Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research expects to see 67% of firms with 40,000-plus employees implement SOA this year and found that 83% of firms are using SOA for internal integration. These trends will help drive adoption of ESBs, according to Forrester in its recent Forrester Wave: Enterprise Service Bus, Q2 2006.
According to Forrester and other industry experts, many organizations implement an ESB as an entry point to SOA, but they all caution that an ESB is only one piece of an enterprisewide SOA and there are alternatives to consider.
"The real question is, how can an ESB help with a SOA implementation plan, which is the challenge a lot of enterprises face," said Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst at ZapThink LLC in Waltham, Mass. "Companies need to think through a plan, identify the business problem, figure out how to build services, then figure out the infrastructure. They may or may not need an ESB."
