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	TABLE OF CONTENTS Home But Wait One Second Catch The Enterprise Service Bus Dial XML For Security Monday Morning Quarterback

In 2006, sales of application, integration and messaging software hovered around $8.5 billion, according to Gartner, with the market for related support and services valued at $132 billion. In 2007, the demand for fast delivery of aggregated information will edge even higher: Maybe it's a growing SOA (service-oriented architecture) initiative, or new business application, such as BPM (business process management). Or perhaps it's an Ajax face-lift for the sagging, dot-com-era interfaces on your custom applications. Whatever the impetus, the demands on your application infrastructure must be addressed sooner or later.

Better make that sooner.

The next 12 months will bring plenty of options to slim down and tone up by adopting technologies that truly live up to the claim, "out-of-the-box." Next-generation EAI (enterprise application integration) and open-source stacks, such as LAMP, are preconfigured and preintegrated for your deployment pleasure. Your infrastructure will be extensible, open and agile, and you won't need to do much more than plug in an Ethernet cable or double-click on "setup.exe."

All Hail EAI 2.0

We never thought we'd be excited about anything that uses the word integration, but appliance vendors are ending the era of torturous year-long integration projects, and we want to cry "Hallelujah!"

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Combining commoditized integration tools such as JDBC (Java Database Connectivity), JMS (Java Messaging Service), IBM WebSphere MQ and flat-file FTP transfers with SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and other newer techniques has resulted in a powerful integration/service enablement platform. You can call it "EAI 2.0," "ESB lite," "EAI-in-a-box" or "protocol mediation." Regardless of the moniker you choose, these products' functionality and ease of deployment herald the dawning of a new age for integration technologies.

Curiously, EAI leaders BEA Systems, Oracle, TIBCO Software and webMethods aren't playing in this game. Rather, companies such as Cast Iron Systems, IBM DataPower, Layer 7 Technologies, Reactivity and SOA Software have taken the lead, combining the best of both the legacy and EAI 2.0 worlds in a range of appliances that are easy to deploy, manage and configure. XML appliance vendors' turnkey hardware backgrounds give them a leg up on software-only vendors.

These implementations provide great business value by combining ease of deployment with simple orchestration options that make integration as effortless as building a Visio diagram. Concerned about integration with monolithic legacy applications? Not to worry. EAI 2.0 leaves very few out in the cold. Integrating applications from PeopleSoft, SAP, Siebel, and even newcomer Salesforce.com is as easy as drag-and-drop. These products are coming of age and adding new adapters, or plug-ins, that support specific enterprise applications and data sources. In 2007, we expect to see a few more (yet unannounced) entrants into the market.

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