Now that the WS-* specifications have become more mature, and SOA is becoming the new architectural pattern for enterprise infrastructures, there are new and unique architectural challenges that need to be addressed in order to fully enjoy the capabilities SOA provides.

In order to fully exploit the interoperability that advanced Web Services provide, a SOA infrastructure must support operational flexibility, a heterogeneous application environment, scalability to support global deployment, and the ability to be managed and monitored from a central point. The enterprise service bus (ESB) provides a common platform to address these requirements and enables organizational best practices to be developed through the use of a common toolset.