I found this little goodie today from IBM, I had to read it twice. "An increasingly common request from clients is to complete a project that does not use service-oriented architecture (SOA) as a whole, but instead implements only an enterprise service bus (ESB) architecture. Such an ESB-oriented architecture is easy to envision, but its success is difficult to measure. What clients requesting such projects do n I found this little goodie today from IBM, I had to read it twice. “An increasingly common request from clients is to complete a project that does not use service-oriented architecture (SOA) as a whole, but instead implements only an enterprise service bus (ESB) architecture. Such an ESB-oriented architecture is easy to envision, but its success is difficult to measure. What clients requesting such projects do not understand is this: An ESB-oriented architecture does not produce business value. A project based on ESB-oriented architecture needs to be made into one based on SOA-oriented architecture to help ensure that it successfully delivers business value.” I’ve stated basically the same thing, so many times, but I never thought IBM would agree with me. Kudos to Bobby Woolf, WebSphere SOA and J2EE Consultant at IBM, who wrote the article. The truth seems to finally be coming out…you can’t buy a SOA. Indeed, SOA is something you do, and an ESB is not an architecture, it’s a mere instance of technology. While the vendors would love you to believe that technology products make the solution, the fact is that it’s a sure fire way to kill your SOA when you purchase the technology too early in the lifecycle of the architecture. SOA requires a great deal of planning and other up-front work to figure out what the issues are, and conceptually how they should be solved, before dragging any SOA technology into the enterprises…ESBs being on that list. As Bobby Woolf concludes: “Clients often want to build only an ESB because that involves a technology challenge without the need for messy business requirements. Building just an ESB becomes an IT field of dreams, where IT builds an ESB and then hopes some SOA will come along and use it. Such an ESB-oriented architecture loses the benefits of SOA. It does not create business value. In fact, it incurs cost without reaping immediate benefit. And it does not align IT and the business.” Amen brother. Software Development