ESBs on trial?

Joe McKendrick did a great job in rounding up some of the ESB pushback that’s been circling around the blogosphere, including my recent posts around this issue.

“Call it rage against the machine. In all the years I have been writing this blog I have never seen such outright vitriol about a solution as I’ve seen against Enterprise Service Buses. Nothing like it against UDDI, nothing like it against BPEL, nothing like it against anything Microsoft.

“Dave Linthicum recently announced how much he hates ESBs, and has taken a zero-tolerance stance against such solutions. He says they are the cause of dysfunctional messes. Jim Webber has always hated ESBs, but he hates all middleware. Loek Bakker once described ESBs as being like a one-day fly: serving some unknown purpose in the ecosystem, and being around only a short time.”

“Hate?” I don’t hate ESBs. I consider them a tool in the shed that architects can leverage for some very specific requirements. My objection is more about the lack of planning when many are leveraging ESBs, and that in many instances they are square pegs in round holes. Indeed, they could derail many SOA projects within many enterprises: their ESBs don’t work, thus SOA does not work. That’s my larger fear.

Moving on.

“I got John’s [Michelsen] reaction to Dave’s post. The question that comes to mind is whether having ESBs — even if they aren’t compatible at the time — may be okay at this relatively early stage of the SOA evolution. Is it necessary to rip out these mediators to move to a purer form of SOA mapped out by enterprise architects, as Dave suggests? Isn’t SOA about service-orienting any and all approaches, no matter how ugly?”

I consider that sentiment as agreeing with me, but not completely. I did get John’s points, and consider many of them valid within the context of my assertions.

And, defending myself on this one, here’s Jeff Schneider’s reaction to my post.

“In an overconfident, if not pompous manner, Dave declares himself correct. He then wants to know why a single dictator doesn’t come in and end-of-life various products across business units, geographies and missions. Well, it might be a good idea for I.T. but may not be in the best interest of the business.

“Personally – I see this as just plain silly advice…but perhaps, I misunderstood his point.”

I think Jeff may be a bit grumpy from even having to respond to this. However, once again, as I mentioned in my previous post, I’m looking for case studies and details that prove why I’m wrong, and thus why this is “silly advice.” Thus far, it’s been out there for 24 hours, and I’ve gotten zero responses.

Also, just to be clear and a bit redundant, I’m not pushing back at all uses of ESBs — they are indeed a fit in some circumstances. I’m really pushing back on the overuse of ESBs, and the problems that the wrong technology will cause when it fails to live up to core requirements of the business. I’ve been writing and speaking about this issue for more than 4 years now, and I’ve yet to be proven wrong. “Pompous,” “overconfident,” not very popular with the ESB vendors, but never wrong, based on how I’m framing the argument.

Within many of the responses to my post, including Jeff’s, they have a tendency to oversimplify the issue. It’s not binary. Few things with enterprise architecture typically are.

Good debate. However, we need to get down to the details now.