When a friend forwarded me Joe's excellent ESB vitriol post analyzing the current round of "ESB-hate" -- sparked by a Dave Linthicum post -- my first thought was to respond on Dave's ESB technology point. Not from a product point-of-view. Rather, a technology architecture point-of-view. Then, the question is not "to ESB, or not to ESB", but what infrastructure services does your organization require to be successful with SOA. Then, and only then, determine the most appropriate products to provide those services. And don't forget to look at what you already have in-house. Boringly, I've been singing this tune since I wrote my "Networked Integration Environment" and related SOA and ESB series for PSG in 2005.
But then, I saw a link for Neil Ward-Dutton's post flow by on Twitter (yes, I tweet), and knew what I should really do was amplify Neil's words on the architectural purity aspect:
"As any experienced IT staffer who's been on the sharp end of a big business merger or acquisition, or even a radical change of leadership, will tell you, businesses don't act like machines that EAs can simply steer so that they tend towards technology optimisation. In fact, it's the opposite: business change forces (new competitors, new product launches, new market launches, new regulations, mergers and acquisitions, and so on) will always drive entropy, tending to push IT estates towards chaos. The best value an EA team can really provide in this environment is to help the IT organisation to absorb these changes with as little stress as possible, and drive consistent, planned responses."
In the words of American poet Charles Olson, "What does not change is the will to change". So, what are doing to inject adaptation into your architecture?
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