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Abstract
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is a compound pattern of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) that can provide sophisticated interconnectivity between services. The ESB concepts can be found at the heart of modern Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management and other conceptually similar platforms that integrate services for various purposes. It has evolved from an on-premises middleware to one of the essential elements of the Cloud Computing service models, such as the emerging Integration Platform as a Service. However, there is a problem in the use of ESB for the integration of services that arises from the breadth of technologies that can be incorporated into ESB, resulting in it becoming over-bloated with functions, noticeable in the distinct ESB products, offered by different software vendors, that support the notion of SOA differently.
This research uses the Design Science Research (DSR) methodology to address the generic design of ESB. This approach amalgamates Thomas Erl’s SOA principles of service design and David Chappell’s characteristics that influence the ESB design with the design principles that are derived from the cybernetic concepts embedded into Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model (VSM). The result of this approach is the development of a novel artefact, in the form of a Viable Enterprise Service Bus Model (VESBM), which can be used for designing an ESB, independent from the technologies that might underpin it. The VESBM was found to be useful and usable in its application by several organisations that were designing Cloud-based and other integrated systems.