According to a May 2007 research report titled "Succeeding With Multiple SOA Service Domains and Disparate ESBs" Gartner predicts that by 2009, eighty percent of large companies will have ESBs or similar SOA infrastructure products from three or more vendors but only half of all large companies will apply a systematic, federated approach to managing their disparate SOA domains and ESBs. Is your organization prepared to take the approach Gartner recommends?

As companies move to SOA they're faced with the significant challenges of making new and existing applications that run on a mix of diverse application servers and enterprise service buses (ESBs) interoperate with each other. As an enterprise architect, IT manager or integration specialist you need to know how to leverage the appropriate technology and organizational best practices to implement heterogeneous SOA solutions.