Multiple ESB Example

David Linthicum accurately assesses my feelings:

http://weblog.infoworld.com/realworldsoa/archives/2008/07/esbs_on_trial.html

"I think Jeff may be a bit grumpy from even having to respond to this. However, once again, as I mentioned in my previous post, I'm looking for case studies and details that prove why I'm wrong, and thus why this is "silly advice." Thus far, it's been out there for 24 hours, and I've gotten zero responses. "

Now, I'm even grumpier for having to respond twice.

In Dave's own blog, within hours, of his post a gentleman responded,

FedEx Delivery is driven largely from a TIBCO-based platform. Kinkos is similarly built upon webMethods. Then they merge. It is simply not rational to think that we cannot provide FedEx with a solution to service orchestration across these 2 systems. That's the business need and what we have to solve for.

So FedEx has Tibco and WebMethods. This is interesting because my friends at SAP have told me that FedEx is a huge customer, hence, they'll probably be using the NetWeaver ESB functions as well. And when I last visited FedEx, they had purchased the BEA AquaLogic stack. My guess is that an Oracle account representative either has or will be talking to them about the virtues of Fusion Middleware and their migration plan. My guess is that they probably also have some DataPower boxes sitting around - and a few of the developers have probably downloaded Mule and are testing it out as well.

I know of no company who isn't facing the exact same issue. I'm surprised that Dave didn't run into this when he was at Mercator or Saga/Software AG. Not picking on Dave here, but it's funny, people always talk about being 'business driven, not I.T. driven', but then they make recommendations to rip out huge pieces of infrastructure to make "I.T Cleaner" because in the long run it will help business. Again, in my opinion, this is silly advice.