Business Value of the Internet Service Bus
Composite applications,
applications that are composed of multiple disparate pieces abstracted as services,
offer tremendous business value to enterprises. Simplifying
the development of composite application and providing flexibility
are two of the main the goals
of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web services. Development of composite
applications, especially when including services that span organizations,
often requires significant investment in constructing low-level functions to enable the interaction of business
services. Some examples include:
- Integrating disparate communication protocols.
- Defining and managing connections to many partners.
- Configuring partner information, and mapping security protocols at enterprise B2B
gateways.
All of these amount to obstacles to building new composite applications.
The Microsoft Internet Service Bus (ISB) shrinks those obstacles.
When developers build new composite applications with the Microsoft ISB technology, they
can build and deploy the composite applications more easily and efficiently. The
ISB provides the infrastructure services necessary to support the applications. Developers
focus on their applications and the functionality and results, not on building and
maintaining infrastructure.
There are several additional benefits that the Microsoft ISB provides:
- The ISB provides pre-integrated functions. Projects do not need to acquire, install,
configure, and integrate or test infrastructure products before implementing their
applications.
- The ISB is integrated, but it also provides its functions in simple, consumable parts.
This allows developers to learn and exploit functions at their own pace, and as
appropriate for the solutions they build.
Situational applications,
ad hoc business solutions, and just-in-time applications are an increasingly common
approach to meeting specific, immediate business requirements. These applications,
often the lifeblood of business agility, typically have a short
lifespan, making it difficult or impossible
to justify a long setup period or the deployment of costly infrastructure.
Available as ready-to-use platform capability,
and accessible over the Internet, the Microsoft ISB removes the need to purchase,
configure, install and test infrastructure hardware and software before
developing the solution, and thus eliminates
a major barrier to developing and exploiting situational applications.
Status
The Microsoft ISB technology is currently available at CTP
(Community Technology Preview) status. Microsoft offers this CTP as an early release of technology,
to explore ideas and solicit feedback that will help shape a final release.
The BizTalk
Labs capability is not currently intended for high-availability production applications
but rather to allow for measured experimentation. The goal over time is to provide a platform that supports production
level, critical applications.The
BizTalk Labs team appreciates
any feedback you have on these technologies.
Microsoft will steadily fill out more of the offering, and the status of the various
pieces will change. Stay tuned to this website for full details.
Learning More
Click here to learn more about major pieces of an Internet Service Bus.