SeeBeyond Catches The Enterprise Service Bus

Customers don't typically connect those dots to SeeBeyond, long known for its traditional EAI tools. But on Monday, SeeBeyond, Monrovia, Calif., unveiled the availability of eInsight Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) 5.0, aimed at departmental integration projects with tight budget constraints.

As its name implies, SeeBeyond's ESB software creates a services-oriented architecture (SOA) that's based on an enterprise service bus. ESBs typically combine messaging technology, such as Java Message Service (JMS), with XML, data transformation and routing technologies, and Web services standards to connect various functions.

While still a fairly nascent integration category, observers increasingly tout ESBs for SMB customers wanting to assemble composite applications built from Web services. Market-research firm Gartner, for example, predicts that more than 60 percent of SMB businesses will use ESB technology by 2005. ESB competitors include Iona Technologies, Dublin, Ireland; Sonic Software, Bedford, Mass.; and SpiritSoft, Boston. IBM, Armonk, N.Y., said it plans to release its own ESB middleware in 2004.

Despite its eye on smaller-scale projects, SeeBeyond's eInsight ESB 5.0 is part of the company's recently introduced Integrated Composite Application Network (ICAN), aimed at large enterprises. ICAN comprises 10 modules that, for example, model business processes, execute them, transform data between application formats, orchestrate processes and monitor their interactions. SeeBeyond executives said eInsight ESB software delivers these same capabilities, scaled down for departmental use, in one package.

The ESB product delivers full J2EE-compliance, both synchronous and asynchronous messaging capabilities, graphical process modeling features, and will coordinate activities among Web services. It will not, however, provide the sorts of capabilities required by larger projects, such as creating Web services from scratch.

"With ESB, we are focusing on smaller projects within large companies, where [they don't] want to spend much money, but [don't] want to worry, either, when it runs out of leash," said Ross Altman, SeeBeyond's CTO. "With ESB, they can segue completely into the full integration suite. We see that as a major advantage for us."

SeeBeyond's eInsight ESB 5.0 costs $10,000 per production CPU. Altman said companies typically end up with three or four CPUs in their production system.