IBM Unveils First ESB Tool for SOA Product Line

Computerworld - IBM last week filled some gaps in its portfolio of software for integrating applications using the service-oriented architecture (SOA) model with several new tools, including its first enterprise service bus (ESB) offering.
The company last week also announced some new services from IBM Global Services aimed at helping customers build SOAs.
IBM had long maintained that an ESB was merely a design concept rather than a specific product, but it apparently took to heart user pressure to supply one, said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at ZapThink LLC in Waltham, Mass. An ESB is described as a broker that manages interactions among applications to form a business process.
Schmelzer said IBM crafted its "entry-level ESB" by repackaging "their enterprise messaging capabilities with some business process capabilities and standards-based interfaces" and making the result lightweight.
Overall, Schmelzer said, the new offerings increase IBM's ability to provide users with an infrastructure to build SOAs.
IBM officials now say they recognize the need for ESB products.
While the Web services technologies are fine for linking two applications, an ESB makes it easier to manage interactions among several applications, said Tom Rosamilia, vice president for WebSphere worldwide research and development.
"If I hook up Services A, B and C to the bus, I only have to make three connections, and the [ESB] then handles the transformation of all the protocols to let any service talk to any other service," he said.
Other companies, including Cape Clear Software Inc. in Waltham, Mass., have already rolled out ESBs. Cape Clear CEO Annrai O'Toole said the IBM move helps validate the need for ESBs, but he criticized the company for its delayed entry into the business.
He also criticized what he called the complexity of the IBM offering, which includes multiple WebSphere products. "The main reason customers like [ESBs] is that it can simplify their life," O'Toole said.
Rosamilia acknowledged that IBM has numerous WebSphere products but said they are well integrated and serve business at different stages of SOA development and with different levels of complexity.
For companies that want to do more-advanced brokering than is supported by the new ESB, for example, IBM also released an update to its WebSphere Message Broker this month. The broker supports a far wider range of protocols than the ESB, he said.
The new SOA offerings unveiled last week by IBM include WebSphere Integration Developer, an Eclipse-based tool for writing programs that link SOA applications into a business process, WebSphere Process Server for orchestrating a flow of business events, andthe ESB.
In addition, IBM brought out an updated version of older SOA tools, including WebSphere Business Monitor, which tracks the performance of business processes made up of SOA applications. IBM said all of the new products should ship within a few months. Pricing will be announced when the products ship.
IBM Global Services released SOA Governance, through which IBM will help companies keep track of and measure improvements in SOA projects, and SOA Industry Teams, through which IBM which will share knowledge and best practices gathered from previous engagements with companies in related vertical industries, IBM said.
Niccolai is a reporter for the IDG News Service.

Read more about Enterprise Architecture and SOA in Computerworld's Enterprise Architecture and SOA Topic Center.