| The common goal of applying technologies such as SOA, EAI, B2B, and web services is to create an architecture for integration that can be pervasive across an extended enterprise and beyond. For an integration infrastructure to achieve this pervasiveness, it must have the following characteristics: It must adapt to suit the needs of general-purpose integration projects across a variety of integration situations, large and small. Adaptability includes providing a durable architecture that is capable of withstanding evolutions in protocols, interface technology, and even process modeling trends. It must link together applications that span the extended enterprise using a single unified approach and a common infrastructure. It must extend beyond the boundaries of a single corporate IT data center and into automating partner relationships such as B2B and supply-chain scenarios. It must have simplicity of design and low barriers to entry, enabling the everyday IT professional to become a self-empowered integration architect. It must provide an SOA across the pervasive integration that enables integration architects to have a broad, abstract view of corporate application assets and automated business processes. It needs the flexibility and ability to react to and meet the needs of changing business requirements and competitive pressures.
 | In an ESB, applications and event-driven services are tied together in an SOA in a loosely coupled fashion. This allows them to operate independently from one another while still providing value to a broader business function. |
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The ESB architecture addresses these needs, and is capable of being adopted for any general-purpose integration project. It is also capable of scaling pervasively across enterprise applications, regardless of physical location and technology platform. Any application can plug into an ESB network using a number of connectivity options, and immediately participate in data sharing with other applications that are exposed across the bus as shared services. This is why the ESB is often referred to as an integration network or integration fabric. An ESB provides a highly distributed approach to integration, with unique capabilities that allow individual departments or business units to build out their integration projects in incremental, digestible chunks. Using an ESB, departments and business units can continue to maintain their own local control and autonomy in individual integration projects, while still being able to connect each integration project into a larger, more global integration network or grid. |
