Is SOA the death of integration? I was asked this question 100 times so far this year. I start to wonder if that is true. Integration and SOA? SOA is not a new thing. This has been a technology that companies have been using for quite some time. Does SOA means integration and does integration mean SOA? Service Oriented Architecture indicates making all the applications web services enabled making integration a easy task. Integration has become more seamless and less expensive than it was until recently. Web Services can make any application expose their functionality as web services.
However, could SOA mean death to the integration brokers? I dont know. I am talking to some experts on this topic. For example, what is going to happen to IBM’s WebSphere Interchange Server (WBI ICS). Now if you want to do Process Integration, we have WebSphere Process Server or WPS. What will happen to WBI ICS. I am curious. Is there still a need for that product? Or is it that IBM is way ahead of the game and came up with WPS. May be not. No wonder IBM is now the dominant leader in the SOA space. However, customers are quite confused still as to whether they should use WebSphere Process Server (WPS), WebSphere Business Integration Interchange Server (WBI ICS), Enterprise Service Bus (WebSphere ESB) or WebSphere Message Broker. I am sure IBM is selling the right product to the right audience.
Integration is an ever green thing. As long as there are disparate applications out there, there is always a need for integration, whether you do it the SOA way or the old traditional way.
Cheers,
Steve Lokam