Microsoft made available the first version of it’s Bitzalk Services as Community Technical Preview (CTP).
Biztalk Services serve as the basis for the next generation ESB the so called Internet Service Bus (ISB).
Unlike the name suggests it is not dependent on Biztalk Server.
The ISB offers functionality in the following areas:
– Identity management
– Connectivity
– Workflow
It supports point-to-point and relayed connections to improve performance.
Why ISB?
Quote:”The name Enterprise Service Bus reflects the historical focus of ESBs within the enterprise. But as business requirements expand to include interconnectivity between enterprises, and as enterprises factor out portions of their information systems to hosted “solutions, traditional ESB approaches become inadequate.
Microsoft offers the ISB infrastructure as a hosted service that helps to get started with the technology within no time.
Although it seems to be a good idea to have an internet wide service bus, it raises questions that have to be answered before this technology will be accepted.
– How reliable is this infrastructure? As reliable as the internet itself?
– Will it be a free service? What are the costs?
– Does my organization accept the Microsoft dependency? Especially for B2B connectivity?
– How can my organization integrate it’s own security profiles?
Nevertheless the idea of having an internet wide bus infrastructure is interesting and worth to keep an eye on.