Monday, November 12, 2012

ESB's rated by analysts

After my post last year [ref: SOA Suite rated by analysts] where I looked into the evaluation of the Oracle SOA Suite by Gartner and Forrester it's time to take a new look on their saying about ESB's (Enterprise Service Bus).
For this I took a look at some newer reports from Forrester and Gartner:
  • The Forrester Wave: Enterprise Service Bus, Q2 2011
    April 25, 2011 by Ken Vollmer
  • Magic Quadrant for Application Infrastructure for Systematic Application Integration Projects
    June 20, 2012 by Jess Thompson, Yefim Natis, Massimo Pezzini, Daniel Sholler, Ross Altman and Kimihiko Iijima

As shown in the graphs the leaders are clearly IBM, Oracle, Software AG and Tibco.
Software AG - worked with webMethods for many years, good product.
Oracle - worked the last couple of years with SOA Suite, the 11g and 12c are build upon weblogic application server, hence the good score.
IBM - will be working with IBM in the near futurs, the multiple ESB offerings from IBM makes me wonder.
Now let's see what is said about IBM's multiple ESB offering:
Forrester - IBM offers three ESB's: WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus (WESB), WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus Registry Edition (WESBRE) and WebSphere Message Broker (WMB). Funny in the Forrester wave is that the actual ESB from IBM, the WebSphere ESB, scored somewhat lower than the other two.
Gartner - Some caution for IBM as despite plans to rationalize and simplify the product portfolio (e.g., in ESB), the fine-grained differences, functional overlaps and product integration challenges — for example, among WMB, WESB, WebSphere Cast Iron and the WebSphere DataPower integration appliances — make it difficult for potential users to determine the best fit for their requirements.
IBM - the faqs on the IBM website mention three different ESB's: IBM WebSphere ESB, IBM WebSphere Message Broker and IBM WebSphere DataPower Integration Appliance XI50.

Here a selection from IBM [ref: faq] on when to use which ESB:

When to Use WebSphere ESB?
  • You use WebSphere Application Server and/or your team has skills with WAS Administration and Java coding
  • You are focused on standards based interactions using XML, SOAP, and WS
  • Reliability and extensive transactional support are key requirements
When to Use WebSphere Message Broker?
  • You are currently using WebSphere Message Broker but not as an ESB
  • You are using Industry formats such as SWIFT, EDI, HL7
  • You are implementing a wide range of messaging and integration patterns
  • You have very complex transformation needs
  • Reliability and extensive transactional support are key requirements
  • To achieve very high-performance with horizontal and vertical scaling
When To Use WebSphere DataPower?
  • Ease of use is a pre-dominant consideration
  • You are transforming between XML-and-XML or XML-and-any other format
  • Your interaction patterns are relatively simple
  • You are using XML-based or WS-Security extensively
  • You require use of advanced Web services standards
  • You need to minimize message latency when adding an ESB layer
  • Your ESB must be in production very quickly
What if you require an ESB from IBM for standards based integration, with complex integration needs, high performance, advanced web service standards and want to move to production quickly?

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