Open Source Enterprise Service Bus : Analyzing impact and value in a large organization

Abstract: System integration is a challenging task for large organizations since they must manage complex IT infrastructures, and utilize hundreds of applications that cause a myriad of complications as a result of rapidly evolving systems and technologies. Over time customer requirements and the automation of internal business functions forced the gigantic service providers to develop and buy applications for different purposes. Not many years before, the applications in an organization were usually separated silos, specifically designed to answer a particular problem. However, this way of working was not efficient. It is not impossible to design one application that runs the total business, however, in reality it can't respond to all the needs inside an organization. In most cases the applications need to interact with each other and to reuse functionalities or data. At this point the concept of integrating systems first came to existence.The progress in computer science and information technology has also affected the way that integration between applications was developed and designed over the years. This shows that there's always some new method that should be studied and investigated. In recent years, the Enterprise Service Bus has come to the market and there are many vendors in the market claiming that they have produced the exact solution needed for requirements of organizations.In this work, the attempt was to construct an understanding of the Enterprise Application Integration practices and methods which have been utilized over the years. Mixed methods research a combination of interviews and questionnaire, and Design Science Research methods were used to generate empirical results. While the first two methods was used to supply the input for challenges of system integration, the DSR build and evaluate method was employed to test the ESB product. The criteria for the test were developed mostly as the outcome of interviews and the questionnaire as the main challenge. The aim was to verify efficiency and effectiveness of the selected and proposed ESB under special designed DSR build and evaluate phases.As a result of both theoretical and empirical studies in combination with selection of different methods in Information System research, the work presents a knowledge foundation for organizations with the aim to make a change in their current system integration practices and patterns utilizing approaches facilitated by ESB products.