If not all your applications conform to the SOA standards, you may need something more advanced that can mediate between the SOA standards and everything else. You can use WebSphere ESB with other products like WebSphere Message Broker to provide such an advanced enterprise service bus.
WebSphere ESB supports numerous protocols for interaction endpoints to dispatch requests to the bus and to receive requests from it. These enable integration of existing applications into SCA-based interactions, and enable non-SCA applications to access SCA modules.
WebSphere ESB can also form an advanced enterprise service bus with other WebSphere and SCA-capable offerings.
By sharing the same administrative console as WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere Process Server, WebSphere ESB helps extend a familiar interface across the operational control of the family of products, and enables a single administrator to manage them all. In the administrative console, task filters provide a simplified user experience and, through the progressive disclosure of functions, access to the full underlying WebSphere Application Server administrative capabilities.
WebSphere ESB can grow into WebSphere Process Server as your ESB requirements increase, adding support for advanced integration capabilities such as business processes and state machines for endpoint orchestration, and business rules for dynamic decision making. The integration developer uses WebSphere Integration Developer for both runtimes, so the development environment scales with your needs. Similarly, the administration console scales from WebSphere Application Server , to WebSphere ESB , to WebSphere Process Server .
WebSphere Message Broker is optimized for enterprise-wide deployments, high performance, and advanced message processing.
A combination of WebSphere ESB and WebSphere Message Broker can provide an infrastructure to enable the flow of information among diverse applications, systems and organizations while helping applications and services communicate with each other in a modular and flexible fashion - regardless of platform, programming language, programming model or message format. In a hub-centric model, WebSphere Message Broker can act as the connectivity hub at a central location that distributes information to various satellite locations. WebSphere Message Broker transforms messages between a range of packaged applications and mainframe systems, and it facilitates integration of the satellites by masking back-end complexity. At the individual satellite locations, WebSphere ESB can provide the application support, transport and mediation layers necessary to maintain new business applications and connect the individual stores with headquarters, increasing the autonomy at each satellite location. Each satellite can use WebSphere ESB to run appropriate business applications within its location, while quickly and easily connecting with the hub at headquarters and with other satellites. Using WebSphere ESB and WebSphere Message Broker can enable the satellites to operate effectively on their own by providing an infrastructure can deliver information to the right place, at the right time, in the right format.
WebSphere MQ is optimized for high performance and scalability, assured message delivery to over 35 platforms.
Provide a service-oriented approach to EIS integration, enabling services to access applications on EIS systems as if they were local service components.