Interview: Bob Sutor on IBM's ESB plans

Sutor: It was always there. Six months ago when we talked about SOAs, we talked much more about Web services, and therefore people thought of [ESBs] much more in terms of the Internet for connectivity. But now that we are really talking about SOAs and its application for the enterprise, like bridging the enterprise across the Internet it has the ring of something more important. It was always there but we are now calling it out more.

InfoWorld: Are you considering delivering multiple ESBs?

Sutor: Remember that a particular ESB could be what you happen to have installed. You could have an ESB in one company and another one in another company, and then merge these companies and bridge them into a great enterprise services bus. An ESB changes just by the nature of what the messaging backbone is and by what plugs into it.

InfoWorld: Will there be a dedicated engine in the mix for managing business processes that can plug into the bus, as well as something that coordinates Web services across the breadth of it?

Sutor: There are things you can do right now, with WebSphere Business Integration monitor for instance, that you can plug in. In fact there is a modeler that fits in as well. That is the stuff we bought from Holosofx. The modeler lets you draw the flow charts, set up conditions, and simulate things [that] might happen. The monitor can pick up real-time information about how things are moving through the business process and give you feedback.

InfoWorld: Can applications on the bus be written to messaging APIs? And will they be event driven?

Sutor: You can do both. There are messaging APIs you plug into MQ and those are straightforward things. When you talk about events, people usually think about pub-sub [publish and subscribe], and that is supported in MQ and our brokers. There are three things you want to think about in that space: One is the straight messaging use, the event side of it, and then the SOA use of it where at that point the bus tends to recede a little bit.

InfoWorld: So there will be something delivered by year's end?

Sutor: That is the plan right now. But we have only talked about enterprise connectivity. Think about connecting with wireless devices, because there you are certainly crossing other protocols. We are getting to the point now where, with JSR 172, it allows these mobile devices to actually be Web services. So you can imagine a device in a truck somewhere that is a Web service that can be queried. Part of your messaging might be over your MQ backbone, then you are going to have to jump wirelessly to access that service. The magic of bridging the bus to the wireless aspects and back is all tied up in the bus. That is why we are saying you have to have that flexibility, you must be able to deal with the existing stuff people have, the very different flavors of protocols like the On Star types of things, but also the Blackberry's. It is the bus and the increasing standardization that will make a lot of the magic happen that makes it a lot easier to connect things together.