In November we began our quest to find the ultimate ESB (enterprise service bus) suite by issuing an invitation to a dozen vendors. Eight took us up on our challenge and sent software to our Green Bay, Wis., business applications lab, home of our fictional widget maker, NWC Inc. Here are the results.
Market Analysis: Enterprise Service Bus An enterprise service bus aligned with a service-oriented architecture can keep business processes flexible. Here's how to see through the hype on this new and complex technology and make the right choices. Product Analysis: Review: ESB Suites The promise of constructing applications by orchestrating services and processes without writing a single line of code is tantalizing. We tested 8 ESB suites to see which one offered the smoothest ride. Our top pick cruised into first place thanks to its powerful Web-based orchestration, monitoring and reporting. ESB Invitation Letter The invitation letter defines the parameters of and criteria to be used for the review. Overview of Evaluation Criteria for Network Computing The test plan provides a more detailed overview of the evaluation criteria for the review. It might be of use for enterprise users planning their own tests in this area. Interactive Report Card ESB: Wave of the Future See the Enterprise Service Bus Forrester Wave results.
Enterprise Service Bus Products Reviews
BEA Systems AquaLogic Service Bus 2.1 Despite limited built-in support for integration with external data sources, excellent Web services support and solid performance at a fair price makes BEA's service bus a strong option for enterprises.
Cape Clear ESB 6.5 A hefty price tag and some odd quirks and flaws encountered make us question if the total cost of the Cape Clear justifies its functionality and feature set.
Fiorano SOA Platform 2006 3.7 Fiorano SOA Platform 2006 confounded us a bit with its JMX terminology, and its pricing may leave some enterprises with sticker shock. But we liked its security focus, and the Fiorano Mapper is one of the best visual data mapping tools we've seen.
IBM WebSphere Message Broker 6.0 IBM's WebSphere Message Broker 6.0 is flexible and offers tons of options, but in this case, so many choices might be too much of a good thing.
Oracle SOA Suite With SOA Suite, Oracle has bundled several tools, letting nearly any user bring about SOA implementations.
Sonic Software SOA Suite 6.1 Sonic's SOA suite has a few too many programming quirks to work out. TIBCO BusinessWorks 5.3 TIBCO's BusinessWorks relies on its messaging know-how to deliver its integrated SOA suite.
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