I received an email from a long-time follower of my blog that I thought might serve to spark a little interesting debate and also serve as a marker in time for my opinions on the subject of ESB and the ever elusive "successfully delivered big project": Hi Rich- Followed your blog from loosely coupled. I am reading these thoughts about the ESB from your post and the loosely coupled post, right around the same time, I had been pushing the same thoughts at various Government of <country> project that I was involved with....somehow "figure stuff out first, build some stuff, and then worry about all this big infrastructure stuff" just does not appeal to people. Hence I have seen two rather large ESB projects crumble under the weight of the huge initial investment and the lack of interest from would-be users. So I am interested in finding out....2 years after your "debate" with Dave Chapell [ part1 , part 2 ], where do you think the ESB situation is? Are the WS-* standards that mature yet? I am once again on a similar path, preaching the same message... Would love to hear where you are with the ESB stuff now? --cheers <name> <name>@<domain>.com SOA Architect To be honest, I don't see any change in my perception on this matter because my beliefs back then were based on painful experience. I haven't yet seen any revolutionary improvement in the way projects are executed that leads me to believe that someone has thought up a significantly "better way". This is largely Read More...