All Roads Lead to the ESB

In ancient Rome, all roads were said to converge at a single spot. Almost 2,000 years later, a striking parallel exists in enterprise technology.
Archeological evidence suggests that at the epicenter of ancient Rome stood a beautiful gilded monument called the Milliarium Aureum. From this monument, it’s believed the official distance from Rome to all points in the Roman Empire was calculated. All major roads were said to converge at this one spot, which sparked the popular saying: “All roads lead to Rome.”
We use this proverb today to say many disparate outcomes can often be traced to a common origin; or, conversely, many different paths can be taken to reach the same objective.
This is certainly the case today in modern IT infrastructure. In order for diverse IT “outposts”—such as Web services, packaged applications, custom applications and so-called legacy systems—to reach a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) or participate in Business Process Management (BPM) projects, their paths must converge at the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB).
It’s not an exaggeration to say the ESB is the new “Millarium Aureum” of enterprise IT. The ESB combines application integration capabilities, high-speed messaging and the ability to transform fine “granular” technical services and disparate functionality into high-value business services. It’s fundamental to successful SOA and BPM projects.
Many “highways” lead to the ESB, such as:
Highway 1 East runs between Adabas on the mainframe and the ESB, enabling Adabas data to be re-used in SOA and BPM initiatives. On this highway, transportation is provided by Event Replicator for Adabas, which can publish changed Adabas data directly to the ESB in real time.
Highway 2 North goes between Natural applications so they can take part in SOA and BPM projects. On this highway, transportation is provided by EntireX, which wraps Natural services for bi-directional communication with the webMethods ESB.
Highway 3 West stretches between Micro Focus COBOL applications (on UNIX and Linux) and the ESB. These applications can be leveraged in SOA and BPM.
Highway 4 South stretches between IBM’s Information Management System (IMS) on the mainframe and the ESB, facilitating participation in SOA and BPM.

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