I have a stock quote when I'm interviewed about the enterprise service bus
(ESB) concept: "The bus does not stop here." My point is that the
bus itself is not the be-all and the end all; it's just the enabler. It is the
enterprise services that get whatever needs to be done done.
Together bus and services make up an architecture (the acronym SOA is in there
somewhere). Dave Rosenberg, CEO of MuleSource, a provider of open source SOA
infrastructure and integration software, has a variation on my quote that I
like better than my own. Dave takes my architectural analysis and puts it into
real-world user terms. Dave says, "Enterprises are deploying multiple ESBs
that ultimately develop into a backbone." His point takes my point one
step further: it isn't a single bus that is important but multiple buses working
with multiple services.
In addition to CEO, Dave Rosenberg is also a founder of MuleSource along with
Ross Mason, chief technology officer. Prior to joining with Ross, Dave served
as Chief Information Officer for Glass Lewis & Co., an investment research
and proxy advisory firm where he used the Mule open source software (OSS) code.
Earlier, Dave was Principal Analyst for the Open Source Development Labs (before
it merged with the Free Standards Group to become the Linux Foundation); it
was there that he received his introduction to OSS. More about Dave's and MuleSource's
OSS bonafides below but follow Dave's thinking on infrastructure and integration
software functionality vis a vis SOA and the SOA market first.
Rosenberg says, "One person's SOA may be someone else's Web Services,
EAI, ESB or other acronym."
The big question enterprises should ask is "What is the right SOA approach
for my environment?" At the highest level, the fundamental challenges are
the same.
- "It's tough to get data to and from different systems in different
formats.
- It's tough to migrate large volumes of data from legacy systems onto new
systems without service disruption.
- And it's tough to juggle the ongoing churn of legacy applications and new
services that need to be wired together."
That's the functionality part of the story.
As for the market side, based on my work at Research
2.0, I estimate the market for integration and messaging infrastructure
software at around $9 billion in 2006. That does not include any associated
implementation, hosting, training and other one-time services, which are often
two to three times as much based on user spending surveys. Very little of this
software would meet the purists definition of SOA today but eventually there
will be a total cutover to SOA integration and messaging infrastructure software
(just as there has been a movement to client/server software from monolithic
software over the last 20 years). Today, only a few suppliers reap the majority
of that $9 billion in revenue. They include IBM with approximately $3 billion;
BEA and Oracle at about $1.5 billion each; and Microsoft, SAP, Software AG,
and TIBCO reaping close to $.5 billion each. As the next cutover takes place,
there is an opportunity to replace any or all of the suppliers mentioned above.
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