ESB Benefits and Disadvantages

The Wikipedia writers have assembled a list of the key benefits and disadvantages of enterprise service bus implementations. This is what they said. This is what the Wikipedia writers said. [citation provided]

Key benefits

• Faster and cheaper accommodation of existing systems.


• Increased flexibility; easier to change as requirements change.


• Standards-based.


• Scales from point solutions to enterprise-wide deployment (distributed bus).


• More configuration rather than integration coding.


• No central rules engine, no central broker.


• Incremental changes can be applied with zero down-time; enterprise becomes "refactorable".

Key disadvantages

• EMM is usually mandatory.


• Value of the ESB requires many disparate systems to collaborate on message standards.


• Without forward planning, the versioning of messages between systems can cause tight coupling instead of the intended loose coupling.


• Vendor depending, it requires more hardware to run.


• New skills needed to configure ESB.


• Extra translation layer when compared to regular messaging solutions.


• Rarely realizes ROI (Return On Investment) witin first few projects; next few projects generally refine messages and services; the fifth project may begin to realize ROI.[citation needed]


• For effective implementation, requires a mature IT governance model (such as ITIL) and a well-defined enterprise strategy to be in place already.