Many smart architects think of WSO2 as simply an open source ESB vendor, and look towards WSO2 when they need to solve a point integration challenge. As a veteran of the SOA adoption wars, I encourage teams to think beyond the ESB, and consider how to build a connected business.

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

AnEnterprise Service Bus is a key cornerstone of your integration and Services Oriented Architecture, and many teams pursue practical ESB adoption over comprehensive SOA thinking. The teams use the high-performance, lean footprint, and mature WSO2 ESB to fulfill common enterprise integration pattern use cases and pragmatically link service consumers to service providers.

However, many ESB Proof of Concept projects today focus on common use cases and miss the bigger picture; Will the team acquire middleware infrastructure that transforms business dynamics.

Connected Business

Spurred on by a confluence of technology developments, including the cloud, mobile, APIs, Big Data, social, and open source, a Connected Business can grow revenue and outperform peers by increasing customer engagement, enhancing productivity, and seizing market opportunity. How does your ESB fit within the business story? and, is an ESB enough?

To be a Connected Business you need an environment that is

Integrated: accelerates interactions inside and outside the organization

–This is where the ESB fits in….

Accessible: reduces interaction friction and cost

–This is where APIs, mobile applications, and on-demand self service (e.g. Integration Platform as a Service iPaaS) fits.

Collaborative: increases engagement and enhances productivity

–This is where social, activity streams, and dashboards driving user engagement fits.

Adaptive: senses business activity and automatically adapts

–This is analyzing the message stream using complex event processing, business activity monitoring, and event driven architecture fits.

How do you build a Connected Business?

To build a Connected Business, consider utilizing WSO2 Connected components. Many organizations are adopting New IT delivery models based on:

API-centric, event-driven, and Service-Oriented Architecture

Mobile access and user engagement platforms

DevOps practices and Cloud-Native platforms

BigData analytics and business activity monitoring

How are you re-shaping your integration architecture and what are your thoughts about how APIs, mobile, DevOps, Cloud, and BigData influence your ESB evaluation criteria?

Refer to Chris's blog