Using Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) for connecting corporate functions and shared services with business divisions in a large enterprise

A large enterprise is typically organized as collection of many business divisions, many corporate functions and many shared services. Our client is such an enterprise with business divisions having high level of autonomy in their operations. This autonomy has resulted into each business division having its own integrated business solution hardwiring its operational functions. Nevertheless, these business units need to integrate with corporate functions and shared services on real-time as well on loosely coupled basis. Hence the client has chosen to deploy an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) for integration among applications residing inside the business divisions with the applications belonging to corporate functions and shared services. This paper shares the ESB deployment experience that could be useful for the enterprises undertaking similar endeavors. In particular, this paper shows how the integration requirements were mapped to various capabilities of ESB and shares the lessons learned during the implementation.